Zap is intended to become the zig replacement for the kind of REST APIs I used to write in python with Flask and mongodb, etc. It can be considered to be a microframework for web applications.
What I need for that is a blazingly fast, robust HTTP server that I can use with zig. While facil.io supports TLS, I don't care about HTTPS support. In production, I use nginx as a reverse proxy anyway.
Zap wraps and patches facil.io - the C web application framework.
⚡ZAP⚡ IS SUPER ALPHA
Under the hood, everything is super robust and fast. My zig wrappers are fresh, juicy, and alpha.
Here's what works:
- Super easy build process: zap's
build.zig
now uses the up-and-coming zig package manager for its C-dependencies, no git submodules anymore.- tested on Linux and macOS (arm, M1)
- hello: welcomes you with some static HTML
- routes: a super easy example dispatching on the HTTP path
- serve: the traditional static web server with optional dynamic request handling
- hello_json: serves you json dependent on HTTP path
- endpoint: a simple JSON REST API example featuring
a
/users
endpoint for PUTting/DELETE-ing/GET-ting/POST-ing and listing users, together with a static HTML and JavaScript frontend to play with. - mustache: a simple example using mustache templating.
- endpoint authentication: a simple authenticated endpoint. Read more about authentication here
I'll continue wrapping more of facil.io's functionality and adding stuff to zap to a point where I can use it as the JSON REST API backend for real research projects, serving thousands of concurrent clients.
Claiming to be blazingly fast is the new black. At least, zap doesn't slow you down and if your server performs poorly, it's probably not exactly zap's fault. Zap relies on the facil.io framework and so it can't really claim any performance fame for itself. In this initial implementation of zap, I didn't care about optimizations at all.
But, how fast is it? Being blazingly fast is relative. When compared with a simple GO HTTP server, a simple zig zap HTTP server performed really good on my machine:
- zig zap was nearly 30% faster than GO
- zig zap had over 50% more throughput than GO
Update: I was intrigued comparing to a basic rust HTTP server. Unfortunately, knowing nothing at all about rust, I couldn't find one and hence tried to go for the one in The Rust Programming Language. Wanting it to be of a somewhat fair comparison, I opted for the multi-threaded example. It didn't work out-of-the-box, but I got it to work and changed it to not read files but outputting a static text just like in the other examples. maybe someone with rust experience can have a look at my wrk/rust/hello code and tell me why it's surprisingly slow, as I expected it to be faster than the basic GO example. I'll enable the GitHub discussions for this matter. My suspicion is bad performance of the mutexes.
So, being somewhere in the ballpark of basic GO performance, zig zap seems to be ... of reasonable performance 😎.
See more details in blazingly-fast.md.
$ git clone https://github.com/zigzap/zap.git
$ cd zap
$ zig build run-hello
$ # open http://localhost:3000 in your browser
... and open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.
If you don't have an existing zig project, create one like this:
$ mkdir zaptest && cd zaptest
$ zig init-exe
$ git init ## (optional)
Note 1: Zap is developed with zig master (0.11.0-dev.1602+d976b4e4a at the
time of writing). This version of zig has the package management features in
place that are used in the following instructions. Nix users are lucky; you can
use the existing flake.nix
and run nix develop
to get a development shell
providing zig, and also all dependencies to build the and run the GO, python,
and rust examples for the wrk
performance tests.
With an existing zig project, adding zap to it is easy:
- Add zap to your
build.zig.zon
- Add zap to your
build.zig
To add zap to build.zig.zon
:
.{
.name = "myapp",
.version = "0.0.1",
.dependencies = .{
// zap 0.0.11
.zap = .{
.url = "https://github.com/zigzap/zap/archive/refs/tags/release-0.0.11.tar.gz",
.hash = "12201e0b2a2a7b034f0dd70326aeb9e23630f802be2d07d2ccede7c9629db0f71737",
}
}
}
Then, in your build.zig
's build
function, add the following before
exe.install()
:
const zap = b.dependency("zap", .{
.target = target,
.optimize = optimize,
});
exe.addModule("zap", zap.module("zap"));
exe.linkLibrary(zap.artifact("facil.io"));
From then on, you can use the zap package in your project. Check out the examples to see how to use zap.
Latest zig-master has problems handling the recent GitHub
redirects to codeload.github.com
. My work-around for this is as follows:
$ wget https://github.com/zigzap/zap/archive/refs/tags/release-0.0.11.tar.gz
$ python -m http.server
This hosts the downloaded tar file on
http://localhost:8000/release-0.0.11.tar.gz
, so use this in the .url
field
in build.zig.zon
until the problem is fixed. After the first zig build
, you
can stop the python http server with CTRL+C.
You can change the URL to zap in your build.zig.zon
- easiest: use a tagged release
- or to one of the tagged versions, e.g.
0.0.9
- or to the latest commit of
zap
Go to the release page. Every release
will state its version number and also provide instructions for changing
build.zig.zon
and build.zig
.
Note: I noticed, for Zap version updates to work with the version of Zig I'm
currently using, I have to erase Zig's global cache after updating my
build.zig.zon
: rm -fr ~/.cache/zig
Go to to the tags page to view all
available tagged versions of zap. From there, right click on the tar.gz
link
to copy the URL to put into your build.zig.zon
.
After changing the .url
field, you will get an error like this at the next
attempt to zig build
:
.../build.zig.zon:8:21: error: hash mismatch:
expected: 12205fd0b60720fb2a40d82118ee75c15cb5589bb9faf901c8a39a93551dd6253049,
found: 1220f4ea8be4a85716ae1362d34c077dca10f10d1baf9196fc890e658c56f78b7424
.hash = "12205fd0b60720fb2a40d82118ee75c15cb5589bb9faf901c8a39a93551dd6253049",
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: If you don't get this error, clean your global zig cache: rm -fr ~/.cache/zig
.
With the new URL, the old hash in the build.zig.zon
is no longer valid. You
need to take the hash value displayed after found:
in the error message as
the .hash
value in build.zig.zon
.
Use the same workflow as above for tags, excpept for the URL, use this schema:
.url = "https://github.com/zigzap/zap/archive/[COMMIT-HASH].tar.gz",
Replace [COMMIT-HASH]
with the full commit hash as provided, e.g. by git log
.
At the current time, I can only add to zap what I need for my personal and professional projects. While this happens blazingly fast, some if not all nice-to-have additions will have to wait. You are very welcome to help make the world a blazingly fast place by providing patches or pull requests, add documentation or examples, or interesting issues and bug reports - you'll know what to do when you receive your calling 👼.
Check out CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.
See also introducing.md for more on the state and progress of this project.
You can also reach me on the zig showtime discord server under the handle renerocksai (renerocksai#1894).
Being blazingly fast requires a constant feed of caffeine. I usually manage to provide that to myself for myself. However, to support keeping the juices flowing and putting a smile on my face and that warm and cozy feeling into my heart, you can always buy me a coffee ☕. All donations are welcomed 🙏 blazingly fast! That being said, just saying "hi" also works wonders with the smiles, warmth, and coziness 😊.
You build and run the examples via:
$ zig build [EXAMPLE]
$ ./zig-out/bin/[EXAMPLE]
... where [EXAMPLE]
is one of hello
, routes
, or serve
.
Example: building and running the hello example:
$ zig build hello
$ ./zig-out/bin/hello
To just run an example, like routes
, without generating an executable, run:
$ zig build run-[EXAMPLE]
Example: building and running the routes example:
$ zig build run-routes
const std = @import("std");
const zap = @import("zap");
fn on_request(r: zap.SimpleRequest) void {
if (r.path) |the_path| {
std.debug.print("PATH: {s}\n", .{the_path});
}
if (r.query) |the_query| {
std.debug.print("QUERY: {s}\n", .{the_query});
}
r.sendBody("<html><body><h1>Hello from ZAP!!!</h1></body></html>") catch return;
}
pub fn main() !void {
var listener = zap.SimpleHttpListener.init(.{
.port = 3000,
.on_request = on_request,
.log = true,
});
try listener.listen();
std.debug.print("Listening on 0.0.0.0:3000\n", .{});
// start worker threads
zap.start(.{
.threads = 2,
.workers = 2,
});
}