RESTinio is a C++17 library that gives you an embedded HTTP/Websocket server. It is based on standalone version of ASIO and targeted primarily for asynchronous processing of HTTP-requests. Boost::ASIO is also supported.
RESTinio itself is a header-only library, but it depends on nodejs/llhttp that is not header-only.
Currently RESTinio is in rather stable state and we think that since v.0.4.0 it is ready for production use.
Consider the task of writing a C++ application that must support some REST API, RESTinio represents our solution for that task.
Lets see how it feels like in the simplest case:
#include <restinio/core.hpp>
int main()
{
restinio::run(
restinio::on_this_thread()
.port(8080)
.address("localhost")
.request_handler([](auto req) {
return req->create_response().set_body("Hello, World!").done();
}));
return 0;
}
Server runs on the main thread, and respond to all requests with hello-world message. Of course you've got an access to the structure of a given HTTP request, so you can apply a complex logic for handling requests.
- Async request handling. Cannot get the response data immediately? That's ok, store request handle somewhere and/or pass it to another execution context and get back to it when the data is ready.
- HTTP pipelining. Works well with async request handling. It might increase your server throughput dramatically.
- Timeout control. RESTinio can take care of bad connection that are like: send "GET /" and then just stuck.
- Response builders. Need chunked-encoded body - then RESTinio has a special response builder for you (obviously it is not the only builder).
- ExpressJS-like request routing (see an example below).
- An experimental typesafe request router that allows avoiding problems of ExpressJS-like router with help of static checks from C++ compiler.
- A possibility to chain several request-handlers (somewhat similar to ExpressJS's middleware).
- Working with query string parameters.
- Several ready-to-use helpers for working with HTTP headers (for example, the support for HTTP headers related to file uploading).
- Supports sending files and its parts (with sendfile on linux/unix and TransmitFile on windows).
- Supports compression (deflate, gzip).
- Supports TLS (HTTPS).
- Basic websocket support. Simply restinio::websocket::basic::upgrade() the request handle and start websocket session on a corresponding connection.
- Can run on external asio::io_context. RESTinio is separated from execution context.
- Some tune options. One can set acceptor and socket options. When running RESTinio on a pool of threads connections can be accepted in parallel.
#include <restinio/core.hpp>
using namespace restinio;
template<typename T>
std::ostream & operator<<(std::ostream & to, const optional_t<T> & v) {
if(v) to << *v;
return to;
}
int main() {
// Create express router for our service.
auto router = std::make_unique<router::express_router_t<>>();
router->http_get(
R"(/data/meter/:meter_id(\d+))",
[](auto req, auto params) {
const auto qp = parse_query(req->header().query());
return req->create_response()
.set_body(
fmt::format("meter_id={} (year={}/mon={}/day={})",
cast_to<int>(params["meter_id"]),
opt_value<int>(qp, "year"),
opt_value<int>(qp, "mon"),
opt_value<int>(qp, "day")))
.done();
});
router->non_matched_request_handler(
[](auto req){
return req->create_response(restinio::status_not_found()).connection_close().done();
});
// Launching a server with custom traits.
struct my_server_traits : public default_single_thread_traits_t {
using request_handler_t = restinio::router::express_router_t<>;
};
restinio::run(
restinio::on_this_thread<my_server_traits>()
.address("localhost")
.request_handler(std::move(router)));
return 0;
}
RESTinio is distributed under BSD-3-CLAUSE license.
The full documentation for RESTinio can be found here.
- Issues and bugs: Issue Tracker on GitHub.
- Discussion section on GitHub.
- Discussion group: restinio.