A web framework for Rust.
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Ian Jackson c24a96308b Add support for immediate chunk flushing, SSE.
Problem:

To support Server-Side Events (SSE, aka JS EventSource) it is
necessary for the server to keep open an HTTP request and dribble out
data (the event stream) as it is generated.

Currently, Rocket handles this poorly.  It likes to fill in complete
chunks.  Also there is no way to force a flush of the underlying
stream: in particular, there is a BufWriter underneath hyper.  hyper
would honour a flush request, but there is no way to send one.

Options:

Ideally the code which is producing the data would be able to
explicitly designate when a flush should occur.  Certainly it would
not be acceptable to flush all the time for all readers.

1. Invent a new kind of Body (UnbufferedChunked) which translates the
data from each Read::read() call into a single call to the stream
write, and which always flushes.  This would be a seriously invasive
change.  And it would mean that SSE systems with fast event streams
might work poorly.

2. Invent a new kind of Body which doesn't use Read at all, and
instead has a more sophisticated API.  This would be super-invasive
and heavyweight.

3. Find a way to encode the necessary information in the Read trait
protocol.

Chosen solution:

It turns out that option 3 is quite easy.  The read() call can return
an io::Error.  There are at least some errors that clearly ought not
to occur here.  An obvious one is ErrorKind::WouldBlock.

Rocket expects the reader to block.  WouldBlock is only applicable to
nonblocking objects.  And indeed the reader will generally want to
return it (once) when it is about to block.

We have the Stream treat io::Error with ErrorKind::WouldBlock, from
its reader, as a request to flush.  There are two effects: we stop
trying to accumulate a full chunk, and we issue a flush call to the
underlying writer (which, eventually, makes it all the way down into
hyper and BufWriter).

Implementation:

We provide a method ReadExt::read_max_wfs which is like read_max but
which handles the WouldBlock case specially.  It tells its caller
whether a flush was wanted.

This is implemented by adding a new code to read_max_internal.  with a
boolean to control it.  This seemed better than inventing a trait or
something.  (The other read_max call site is reading http headers in
data.rs, and I think it wants to tread WouldBlock as an error.)

Risks and downsides:

Obviously this ad-hoc extension to the Read protocol is not
particularly pretty.  At least, people who aren't doing SSE (or
similar) won't need it and can ignore it.

If for some reason the data source is actually nonblocking, this new
arrangement would spin, rather than calling the situation a fatal
error.  This possibility seems fairly remote, in production settings
at least.  To migitate this it might be possible for the loop in
Rocket::issue_response to bomb out if it notices it is sending lots of
consecutive empty chunks.

It is possible that async Rocket will want to take a different
approach entirely.  But it will definitely need to solve this problem
somehow, and naively it seems like the obvious transformation to eg
the Tokio read trait would have the same API limitation and admit the
same solution.  (Having a flush occur every time the body stream
future returns Pending would not be good for performance, I think.)
2020-10-29 23:37:36 -07:00
.github For install Rust nightly in CI script. 2020-09-12 03:21:49 -07:00
contrib Fix library versions in database contrib docs. 2020-09-12 03:11:51 -07:00
core Add support for immediate chunk flushing, SSE. 2020-10-29 23:37:36 -07:00
examples Add support for immediate chunk flushing, SSE. 2020-10-29 23:37:36 -07:00
scripts New version: 0.4.5. 2020-05-30 14:29:06 -07:00
site Fix library versions in database contrib docs. 2020-09-12 03:11:51 -07:00
.gitattributes Migrate from Travis to Azure Pipelines for CI. 2019-07-06 01:15:47 -07:00
.gitignore Pass flags along in 'publish' script. 2018-10-31 04:47:21 -07:00
CHANGELOG.md New version: 0.4.5. 2020-05-30 14:29:06 -07:00
Cargo.toml Add support for immediate chunk flushing, SSE. 2020-10-29 23:37:36 -07:00
LICENSE-APACHE Add licenses. 2016-12-23 03:18:59 -08:00
LICENSE-MIT Update copyright year in LICENSE-MIT. 2019-05-10 19:50:58 -07:00
README.md Fix typo in README: missing 'a'. 2020-02-27 18:20:57 -08:00

README.md

Rocket

Build Status Rocket Homepage Current Crates.io Version Matrix: #rocket:mozilla.org IRC: #rocket on chat.freenode.net

Rocket is a web framework for Rust (nightly) with a focus on ease-of-use, expressibility, and speed. Here's an example of a complete Rocket application:

#![feature(proc_macro_hygiene, decl_macro)]

#[macro_use] extern crate rocket;

#[get("/<name>/<age>")]
fn hello(name: String, age: u8) -> String {
    format!("Hello, {} year old named {}!", age, name)
}

fn main() {
    rocket::ignite().mount("/hello", routes![hello]).launch();
}

Visiting localhost:8000/hello/John/58, for example, will trigger the hello route resulting in the string Hello, 58 year old named John! being sent to the browser. If an <age> string was passed in that can't be parsed as a u8, the route won't get called, resulting in a 404 error.

Documentation

Rocket is extensively documented:

The official community support channels are #rocket:mozilla.org on Matrix and the bridged #rocket IRC channel on Freenode at chat.freenode.net. We recommend joining us on Matrix via Riot. If your prefer IRC, you can join via the Kiwi IRC client or a client of your own.

Building

Nightly

Rocket requires a nightly version of Rust as it makes heavy use of syntax extensions. This means that the first two unwieldly lines in the introductory example above are required.

Core, Codegen, and Contrib

All of the Rocket libraries are managed by Cargo. As a result, compiling them is simple.

  • Core: cd lib && cargo build
  • Codegen: cd codegen && cargo build
  • Contrib: cd contrib && cargo build --all-features

Examples

Rocket ships with an extensive number of examples in the examples/ directory which can be compiled and run with Cargo. For instance, the following sequence of commands builds and runs the Hello, world! example:

cd examples/hello_world
cargo run

You should see Hello, world! by visiting http://localhost:8000.

Testing

To test Rocket, simply run ./scripts/test.sh from the root of the source tree. This will build and test the core, codegen, and contrib libraries as well as all of the examples. The test.sh script accepts no flags or either the --release flag to test in release mode or the --contrib flag to test all contrib modules individually. This script gets run by CI.

To test a crate individually, run cargo test --all-features in the corresponding crate directory.

Core

Testing for the core library is done inline in the corresponding module. For example, the tests for routing can be found at the bottom of the lib/src/router/mod.rs file.

Codegen

Code generation tests can be found in codegen/tests. We use the compiletest library, which was extracted from rustc, for testing. See the compiler test documentation for information on how to write compiler tests.

Documentation

You can build the Rocket API documentation locally by running ./scripts/mk-docs.sh. The resulting documentation is what gets uploaded to api.rocket.rs.

Contributing

Contributions are absolutely, positively welcome and encouraged! Contributions come in many forms. You could:

  1. Submit a feature request or bug report as an issue.
  2. Ask for improved documentation as an issue.
  3. Comment on issues that require feedback.
  4. Contribute code via pull requests.

We aim to keep Rocket's code quality at the highest level. This means that any code you contribute must be:

  • Commented: Public items must be commented.
  • Documented: Exposed items must have rustdoc comments with examples, if applicable.
  • Styled: Your code should be rustfmt'd when possible.
  • Simple: Your code should accomplish its task as simply and idiomatically as possible.
  • Tested: You must add (and pass) convincing tests for any functionality you add.
  • Focused: Your code should do what it's supposed to do and nothing more.

All pull requests are code reviewed and tested by the CI. Note that unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Rocket by you shall be dual licensed under the MIT License and Apache License, Version 2.0, without any additional terms or conditions.

License

Rocket is licensed under either of the following, at your option:

The Rocket website source is licensed under separate terms.