C++ Network Library

The C++ Network Library v0.8 Out Now!

2010-11-21T09:22:00.000+01:00

The C++ Network Library team is proud to announce the availability of version 0.8 of the library after one whole week of getting feedback on the Beta version. The library is being maintained by Dean Michael Berris the project founder (and author of this blog) and is being supported by the C++ Network Library Developers through the cpp-netlib developers mailing list. You can get the latest version of the library from the Github repository downloads page. You can also find out more about cpp-netlib's 0.8 release from the online home of its documentation at http://cpp-netlib.github.com/0.8/.

This is the eighth minor version release of the library which is steadily working towards the version 1.0 release to be submitted for review to the Boost C++ Library for wider availability. You can send in your library feedback and/or issues through the project's Github Issues page, where the maintainers of the project will then appropriately schedule the issues to be addressed for future release. If you don't have a Github account, you can subscribe to the developer mailing list and send in your feature requests and participate in the discussion with the project developers as well.

New in 0.8

The library features a new asynchronous HTTP server template to allow for handling requests asynchronously and allowing handlers to write back data to the connections. This has been one of the most requested features from users, to enable writing high-throughput and scalable web applications with cpp-netlib. Version 0.8 also comes with a simple and short (less than 200 lines of code) example of an HTTP server that has been benchmarked locally on an Intel Core 2 4400 with 2GB of RAM in Linux 64-bit to be able to serve a 7.4Kb file at roughly 3800 RPS. Over the network, it performs at a slightly lower rate of ~246 RPS on a home WLAN 802.11b/g network because of the communication costs -- sustained transfer rate of 1 megabyte per second -- but the performance profile of the application doesn't go higher than 5% CPU utilization at 1000 concurrent connections. Benchmarks were performed using Apache Bench (Apache AB).

In 0.8 the library also now provides a means of checking whether a given asynchronous response object is ready with the full data requested by the client. In 0.7 the library introduced an active HTTP client implementation that returns asynchronously built responses. There used to be no way to check whether a given response is ready to be dealt with. Because of user feedback in the development of 0.8, the developers were able to implement a check for readiness which is now available in the 0.8 release.

What's coming for 0.9

With 0.8 out the door, the cpp-netlib development team is ramping up development of 0.9 where users should look out for the following features:

Supporting Boost.IOStreams in the Client Request and Server Request/Response for message bodies. This will finally allow for sending over large amounts of data in files through the HTTP Client and Server implementations.
More Client-side HTTP Features, to support Cookie Management, Proxy Support.
Boost.Parameter-based APIs to allow for better flexibility of the client and server interfaces.
More HTTP Server-side convenience tools for Web Service development to make developing REST-ful web services easier, and the beginnings of a web development framework supporting templates, routes, and request handlers.
Initial ESTMP 1.0 support.

The project leaders are looking to get 0.9 just before the Christmas holiday season, at which time the 1.0 snapshot will also be submitted for review to the Boost C++ Library.

Commercial Support and Sponsorship

Dean Michael Berris is working on building a company around cpp-netlib to provide commercial support and custom development consulting done to make sure that the project keeps going. The cpp-netlib project will continue to be open source and the commercially supported version gets customers access to in-depth support for integrating cpp-netlib into their commercial applications. At this time, pricing on the support licensing as well as custom development rates are still being formulated.

The project will also welcome corporate sponsorship to ensure that the contributors and developers get access to different platforms and resources to ensure that cpp-netlib will continue to be of high quality and will be available in as many platforms as possible. If you or your company may be interested in donating resources and/or sponsoring the development of a specific part of cpp-netlib, you can reach out through the developers mailing list or to the maintainers of the project.

This article is cross-posted to cplusplus-soup.com, www.deanberris.com, and cpp-netlib.blogspot.com.

C++ Network Library and Trac

2009-07-12T10:43:00.003+02:00

After a period of low activity, some problems are apparent. Over the last few months there has been some activity on the mailing list from people who have expressed a will to get involved with development but for one reason or another have not been able to get started or make any progress. I believe a lot of this has to do the fact that we're not maintaining an up-to-date schedule or roadmap, and its difficult for new contributors to find out where or how they should start.

For this reason I have decided to add Trac to the sourceforge site. The URL is:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/cpp-netlib/

This has a number of advantages over what we currently have:

* It allows us to set up milestones and components, to give a better overview of the current project progress
* There's an integrated and intuitive source browser
* There's a ticket tracker which allows tickets to be assigned to milestones and components

While these are in some form available through sourceforge's project page, they're not cohesive in the same way as Trac is.

If people are happy with this, then as a first step I'd urge you to start adding tickets and bug reports. For those who want to do some development then contact the mailing list.

I hope this is a step that allows us to better track progress and gives an incentive for new members to contribute.

Release 0.3 available in Sourceforge

2008-10-20T19:57:00.002+02:00

This post is to announce the release of version 0.3 of the C++ Network Library (with apologies for failing to announce the release of 0.2 on this blog ;).

Updates include:

* Improved documentation;
* Additional constructors for http::client with arguments for following redirects and clearing the resolver cache;
* Updated unit testing.

Release 0.1 Now Available in Sourceforge

2008-08-26T08:17:00.002+02:00

This is just a quick note to let the world know that the C++ Network Library now has an 0.1 release available from the Sourceforge project site. This 0.1 release includes:

Messaging Framework

HTTP 1.0 Client with GET, PUT, DELETE, POST, and HEAD suppport

Initial Unit Tests

This is an early Alpha release which does not have enough documentation. The 0.2 release is scheduled Monday (September 1st, 2008) which should include HTML documentation and more changes.

Please join the mailing list and try out the software and be part of the development of the library!

Open Thread: Your Pet Peeves

2008-08-14T22:15:00.002+02:00

I'm writing this post to ask potential users of the C++ Network Library what their worst experiences are with existing networking libraries, and what you'd want to see (or not see) in a new network library. I personally have my motivation for working on a new network library in C++ because of past (and present) experiences. These personal motivations are already pretty much documented in the rationale for the library (and the architecture document) but I'd like to know what people think should be the other goals of the C++ Network Library.

Currently, I'm focusing my time implementing an HTTP Client with the most features useful to me (and the new generation of web-aware software) that I'm having tunnel-vision as to what I'm supposed to be doing and how I'm supposed to be doing it. Knowing from the audience what they would want to see next would be a nice refresher to let the team know what sort of thing we should be working on in the project.

So what are your pet peeves (and/or worst experiences) with existing networking libraries that you want addressed in a new network library? Let us know!

HTTP Client: Supports GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, and DELETE

2008-08-11T10:01:00.002+02:00

After a long time coming, the C++ Network Library now supports the standard HTTP commands that modern clients need. In the branch http_integration, I've been able to implement a synchronous HTTP Client implementation that supports the major HTTP commands.

What's left to be done is to write more unit tests and actually use it in real-life applications. Fast approaching is an asynchronous client implementation, and eventually a 1.0 alpha.

We need help in the following areas:

- Testing
- Debugging
- Documentation

If you want to be part of the project, please don't hesitate to join us in the C++ Network Library Developers mailing list.

HTTP 1.0 Implementation now in trunk!

2007-10-09T16:21:00.000+02:00

Okay, this will be quick.

Yesterday I was able to come up with a really crude yet functional HTTP 1.0 client. This is already available in the subversion repository, and ready for more unit tests to make sure that we can cover more cases before shipping. Help would be definitely appreciated in terms of writing unit tests and refactoring/improving the URI parser and the client implementation.

More information to come in the next few days as I continue developing the HTTP implementation.

So if you have time to spare and brain cycles to donate, we'd definitely appreciate the help!

Software requirements

2007-08-19T13:53:00.000+02:00

I've put up the beginnings of software requirements specification on the C++ Network wiki. I hope this could spark a bit of debate and we can make some more progress when its decided exactly what networking features we'd like to add to C++.

Project Co-ordination

2007-08-01T13:33:00.000+02:00

The first announcement I can make is that I have installed myself (in a benevolent 3rd world dictator kind of way) as release manager/project co-ordinator. This will free Dean to continue outlining his vision with the architecture documentation and I will hope to be able to encourage some people to contribute ideas, time or other resources to this project.

If you want to contribute, take a look at our mailing list and we'll be interested to hear what your thoughts are.

Networking in C++

2007-07-30T19:31:00.000+02:00

In the interests of promoting discussion, and taking a cue from the success of Improving Boost Documents, this blog has been set up to show-case networking in C++, and to provide feedback for the cpp-netlib community.

The aim of cpp-netlib is to provide a library with clean, type-safe interface for networking using modern C++ techniques. Eventually, it is hoped that it will become a part of the Boost C++ Libraries.