iodine - a fast HTTP / Websocket Server with native Pub/Sub support for the new web

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Iodine is a fast concurrent web server for real-time Ruby applications, with native support for:

  • Websockets and EventSource (SSE);
  • Pub/Sub (with optional Redis Pub/Sub scaling);
  • Static file service (with automatic gzip support for pre-compressed versions);
  • HTTP/1.1 keep-alive and pipelining;
  • Asynchronous event scheduling and timers;
  • Hot Restart (using the USR1 signal);
  • Client connectivity (attach client sockets to make them evented);
  • Custom protocol authoring;
  • and more!

Iodine is an evented framework with a simple API that ports much of the C facil.io framework to Ruby. This means that:

  • Iodine can handle thousands of concurrent connections (tested with more then 20K connections on Linux)!

  • Iodine is ideal for Linux/Unix based systems (i.e. macOS, Ubuntu, FreeBSD etc'), which are ideal for evented IO (while Windows and Solaris are better at IO completion events, which are totally different).

Iodine is a C extension for Ruby, developed and optimized for Ruby MRI 2.2.2 and up... it should support the whole Ruby 2.0 MRI family, but Rack requires Ruby 2.2.2, and so iodine matches this requirement.

Iodine - a fast & powerful HTTP + Websockets server with native Pub/Sub

Iodine includes a light and fast HTTP and Websocket server written in C that was written according to the Rack interface specifications and the Websocket draft extension.

With Iodine.listen2http it's possible to run multiple HTTP applications (please remember not to set more than a single application on a single TCP/IP port).

Iodine also supports native process cluster Pub/Sub and a native RedisEngine to easily scale iodine's Pub/Sub horizontally.

Running the web server

Using the iodine server is easy, simply add iodine as a gem to your Rack application:

gem 'iodine', '~>0.6'

Iodine will calculate, when possible, a good enough default concurrency model for lightweight applications... this might not fit your application if you use heavier database access or other blocking calls.

To get the most out of iodine, consider the amount of CPU cores available and the concurrency level the application requires.

The common model of 16 threads and 4 processes can be easily adopted:

bundler exec iodine -p $PORT -t 16 -w 4

Static file serving support

Iodine supports an internal static file service that bypasses the Ruby layer and serves static files directly from "C-land".

This means that iodine won't lock Ruby's GVL when sending static files. The files will be sent directly, allowing for true native concurrency.

Since the Ruby layer is unaware of these requests, logging can be performed by turning iodine's logger on.

To use native static file service, setup the public folder's address before starting the server.

This can be done when starting the server from the command line:

bundler exec iodine -p $PORT -t 16 -w 4 -www /my/public/folder

Or by adding a single line to the application. i.e. (a config.ru example):

require 'iodine'
# static file service
Iodine.listen2http public: '/my/public/folder'
# for static file service, we only need a single thread per worker.
Iodine.threads = 1
Iodine.start

To enable logging from the command line, use the -v (verbose) option:

bundler exec iodine -p $PORT -t 16 -w 4 -www /my/public/folder -v

X-Sendfile

Ruby can leverage static file support (if enabled) by using the X-Sendfile header in the Ruby application response.

To enable iodine's native X-Sendfile support, a static file service (a public folder) needs to be assigned (this informs iodine that static files aren't sent using a different layer, such as nginx).

This allows Ruby to send very large files using a very small memory footprint, as well as (when possible) leveraging the sendfile system call.

i.e. (example config.ru for iodine):

app = proc do |env|
  request = Rack::Request.new(env)
  if request.path_info == '/source'.freeze
    [200, { 'X-Sendfile' => File.expand_path(__FILE__), 'Content-Type' => 'text/plain'}, []]
  elsif request.path_info == '/file'.freeze
    [200, { 'X-Header' => 'This was a Rack::Sendfile response sent as text.' }, File.open(__FILE__)]
  else
    [200, { 'Content-Type' => 'text/html',
            'Content-Length' => request.path_info.length.to_s },
     [request.path_info]]
 end
end
# # optional:
# use Rack::Sendfile
run app

Go to localhost:3000/source to experience the X-Sendfile extension at work.

Pre-Compressed assets / files

Simply gzip your static files and iodine will automatically recognize and send the gz version if the client (browser) supports the gzip transfer-encoding.

For example, to offer a compressed version of style.css, run (in the terminal):

  $  gzip -k -9 style.css

Now, you will have two files in your folder, style.css and style.css.gz.

When a browser that supports compressed encoding (which is most browsers) requests the file, iodine will recognize that a pre-compressed option exists and will prefer the gzip compressed version.

It's as easy as that. No extra code required.

Special HTTP Upgrade and SSE support

Iodine's HTTP server implements the WebSocket/SSE Rack Specification Draft, supporting native WebSocket/SSE connections using Rack's env Hash.

This promotes separation of concerns, where iodine handles all the Network related logic and the application can focus on the API and data it provides.

Upgrading an HTTP connection can be performed either using iodine's native WebSocket / EventSource (SSE) support with env['rack.upgrade?'] or by implementing your own protocol directly over the TCP/IP layer - be it a WebSocket flavor or something completely different - using env['upgrade.tcp'].

EventSource / SSE

Iodine treats EventSource / SSE connections as if they were a half-duplex WebSocket connection, using the exact same API and callbacks as WebSockets.

When an EventSource / SSE request is received, iodine will set the Rack Hash's upgrade property to :sse, so that: env['rack.upgrade?'] == :sse.

The rest is detailed in the WebSocket support section.

WebSockets

When a WebSocket connection request is received, iodine will set the Rack Hash's upgrade property to :websocket, so that: env['rack.upgrade?'] == :websocket

To "upgrade" the HTTP request to the WebSockets protocol (or SSE), simply provide iodine with a WebSocket Callback Object instance or class: env['rack.upgrade'] = MyWebsocketClass or env['rack.upgrade'] = MyWebsocketClass.new(args)

Iodine will adopt the object, providing it with network functionality (methods such as write, defer and close will become available) and invoke it's callbacks on network events.

Here is a simple chat-room example we can run in the terminal (irb) or easily paste into a config.ru file:

require 'iodine'
module WebsocketChat
  def on_open client
    # Pub/Sub directly to the client (or use a block to process the messages)
    client.subscribe :chat
    # Writing directly to the socket
    client.write "You're now in the chatroom."
  end
  def on_message client, data
    # Strings and symbol channel names are equivalent.
    client.publish "chat", data
  end
  extend self
end
APP = Proc.new do |env|
  if env['rack.upgrade?'.freeze] == :websocket 
    env['rack.upgrade'.freeze] = WebsocketChat 
    [0,{}, []] # It's possible to set cookies for the response.
  elsif env['rack.upgrade?'.freeze] == :sse
    puts "SSE connections can only receive data from the server, the can't write." 
    env['rack.upgrade'.freeze] = WebsocketChat
    [0,{}, []] # It's possible to set cookies for the response.
  else
    [200, {"Content-Length" => "12", "Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, ["Welcome Home"] ]
  end
end
# Pus/Sub can be server oriented as well as connection bound
root_pid = Process.pid
Iodine.subscribe(:chat) {|ch, msg| puts msg if Process.pid == root_pid }
# By default, Pub/Sub performs in process cluster mode.
Iodine.workers = 4
# # in irb:
Iodine.listen2http public: "www/public", app: APP
Iodine.start
# # or in config.ru
run APP

Native Pub/Sub with optional Redis scaling

Iodine's core, facil.io offers a native Pub/Sub implementation. The implementation is totally native to iodine, it covers the whole process cluster and it can be easily scaled by using Redis (which isn't required except for horizontal scaling).

Here's an example that adds horizontal scaling to the chat application in the previous example, so that Pub/Sub messages are published across many machines at once:

# initialize the Redis engine for each iodine process.
if ENV["REDIS_URL"]
  Iodine::PubSub.default = Iodine::PubSub::Redis.new(ENV["REDIS_URL"])
else
  puts "* No Redis, it's okay, pub/sub will still run on the whole process cluster."
end
# ... the rest of the application remains unchanged.

The new Redis client can also be used for asynchronous Redis command execution. i.e.:

if(Iodine::PubSub.default.is_a? Iodine::PubSub::Redis)
  # Ask Redis about all it's client connections and print out the reply.
  Iodine::PubSub.default.cmd("CLIENT LIST") { |reply| puts reply }
end

Pub/Sub Details and Limitations:

  • Iodine's Redis client does not support multiple databases. This is both because database scoping is ignored by Redis during pub/sub and because Redis Cluster doesn't support multiple databases. This indicated that multiple database support just isn't worth the extra effort.

  • The iodine Redis client will use a single Redis connection per process (for publishing data) and an extra Redis connection for subscriptions (owned by the master process). Connections will be automatically re-established if timeouts or errors occur.

TCP/IP (raw) sockets

Upgrading to a custom protocol (i.e., in order to implement your own Websocket protocol with special extensions) is available when neither WebSockets nor SSE connection upgrades were requested. In the following (terminal) example, we'll use an echo server without direct socket echo:

require 'iodine'
class MyProtocol
  def on_message client, data
    # regular socket echo - NOT websockets
    client.write data
  end
end
APP = Proc.new do |env|
  if env["HTTP_UPGRADE".freeze] =~ /echo/i.freeze
    env['upgrade.tcp'.freeze] = MyProtocol.new
    # an HTTP response will be sent before changing protocols.
    [101, { "Upgrade" => "echo" }, []]
  else
    [200, {"Content-Length" => "12", "Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, ["Welcome Home"] ]
  end
end
# # in irb:
Iodine.listen2http public: "www/public", app: APP
Iodine.threads = 1
Iodine.start
# # or in config.ru
run APP

A few notes

This design has a number of benefits, some of them related to better IO handling, resource optimization (no need for two IO polling systems), etc. This also allows us to use middleware without interfering with connection upgrades and provides backwards compatibility.

Iodine's HTTP server imposes a few restrictions for performance and security reasons, such as limiting each header line to 8Kb. These restrictions shouldn't be an issue and are similar to limitations imposed by Apache or Nginx.

If you still want to use Rack's hijack API, iodine will support you - but be aware that you will need to implement your own reactor and thread pool for any sockets you hijack, as well as a socket buffer for non-blocking write operations (why do that when you can write a protocol object and have the main reactor manage the socket?).

How does it compare to other servers?

The honest answer is "I don't know". I recommend that you perform your own tests.

In my tests, pitching Iodine against Puma, Iodine was anywhere between x1.5 and x7 faster than Puma (depending on use-case). such a big difference is suspect and I recommend that you test it yourself.

Also, performing benchmarks on a single machine isn't very reliable... but it's all I've got.

When benchmarking with wrk, on the same local machine with similar settings for both Puma and Iodine (4 workers, 16 threads each, 200 concurrent connections), I calculated Iodine to be x1.52 faster::

  • Iodine performed at 74,786.27 req/sec, consuming ~68.4Mb of memory.

  • Puma performed at 48,994.59 req/sec, consuming ~79.6Mb of memory.

When benchmarking using a VM (crossing machine boundaries, 16 threads, 4 workers, 200 concurrent connections), I calculated Iodine to be x2.3 faster:

  • Iodine performed at 23,559.56 req/sec, consuming ~88.8Mb of memory.

  • Puma performed at 9,935.31 req/sec, consuming ~84.0Mb of memory.

When benchmarking using a VM (crossing machine boundaries, single thread, single worker, 200 concurrent connections), I calculated Iodine to be x7.3 faster:

  • Iodine performed at 18,444.31 req/sec, consuming ~25.6Mb of memory.

  • Puma performed at 2,521.56 req/sec, consuming ~27.5Mb of memory.

I have doubts about my own benchmarks and I recommend benchmarking the performance for yourself using wrk or ab:

$ wrk -c200 -d4 -t2 http://localhost:3000/
# or
$ ab -n 100000 -c 200 -k http://127.0.0.1:3000/

Create a simple config.ru file with a hello world app:

App = Proc.new do |env|
   [200,
     {   "Content-Type" => "text/html".freeze,
         "Content-Length" => "16".freeze },
     ['Hello from Rack!'.freeze]  ]
end

run App

Then start comparing servers. Here are the settings I used to compare iodine and Puma (4 processes, 16 threads):

$ RACK_ENV=production iodine -p 3000 -t 16 -w 4
# vs.
$ RACK_ENV=production puma -p 3000 -t 16 -w 4
# Review the `iodine -?` help for more command line options.

It's recommended that the servers (Iodine/Puma) and the client (wrk/ab) run on separate machines.

Performance oriented design - but safety first

Iodine is an evened server, similar in it's architecture to nginx and puma. It's different than the simple "thread-per-client" design that is often taught when we begin to learn about network programming.

By leveraging epoll (on Linux) and kqueue (on BSD), iodine can listen to multiple network events on multiple sockets using a single thread.

All these events go into a task queue, together with the application events and any user generated tasks, such as ones scheduled by Iodine.run.

In pseudo-code, this might look like this

QUEUE = Queue.new

def server_cycle
    if(QUEUE.empty?)
      QUEUE << get_next_32_socket_events # these events schedule the proper user code to run
    end
    QUEUE << server_cycle
end

def run_server
      while ((event = QUEUE.pop))
            event.shift.call(*event)
      end
end

In pure Ruby (without using C extensions or Java), it's possible to do the same by using select... and although select has some issues, it works well for lighter loads.

The server events are fairly fast and fragmented (longer code is fragmented across multiple events), so one thread is enough to run the server including it's static file service and everything...

...but single threaded mode should probably be avoided.

The thread pool is there to help slow user code.

It's very common that the application's code will run slower and require external resources (i.e., databases, a custom pub/sub service, etc'). This slow code could "starve" the server, which is patiently waiting to run it's tasks on the same thread.

The slower your application code, the more threads you will need to keep the server running in a responsive manner (note that responsiveness and speed aren't always the same).

Free, as in freedom (BYO beer)

Iodine is free and open source, so why not take it out for a spin?

It's installable just like any other gem on Ruby MRI, run:

$ gem install iodine

If building the native C extension fails, please note that some Ruby installations, such as on Ubuntu, require that you separately install the development headers (ruby.h and friends). I have no idea why they do that, as you will need the development headers for any native gems you want to install - so hurry up and get them.

If you have the development headers but still can't compile the iodine extension, open an issue with any messages you're getting and I'll be happy to look into it.

Mr. Sandman, write me a server

Iodine allows custom TCP/IP server authoring, for those cases where we need raw TCP/IP (UDP isn't supported just yet).

Here's a short and sweet echo server - No HTTP, just use telnet:


require 'iodine'

# an echo protocol with asynchronous notifications.
class EchoProtocol
  # `on_message` is an optional alternative to the `on_data` callback.
  # `on_message` has a 1Kb buffer that recycles itself for memory optimization.
  def on_message buffer
    # writing will never block and will use a buffer written in C when needed.
    write buffer
    # close will be performed only once all the data in the write buffer
    # was sent. use `force_close` to close early.
    close if buffer =~ /^bye[\r\n]/i
    # use buffer.dup to save the data from being recycled once we return.
    data = buffer.dup
    # run asynchronous tasks with ease
    run do
      sleep 1
      puts "Echoed data: #{data}"
    end
  end
end

# listen on port 3000 for the echo protocol.
Iodine.listen 3000, EchoProtocol
Iodine.threads = 1
Iodine.processes = 1
Iodine.start

Why not EventMachine?

You can go ahead and use EventMachine if you like. They're doing amazing work on that one and it's been used a lot in Ruby-land... really, tons of good developers and people on that project.

EventMachine also offers some really great optimization features and it was vastly improved upon in the last few years (When I started Iodine, it was far more annoying to work with).

But there's a distinct approach difference for me. EventMachine attempts to give the developer access to the network layer while Iodine attempts to abstract the network layer away.

Besides, you're here - why not take iodine out for a spin and see for yourself?

Can I contribute?

Yes, please, here are some thoughts:

  • I'm really not good at writing automated tests and benchmarks, any help would be appreciated. I keep testing manually and that's less then ideal (and it's mistake prone).

  • PRs or issues related to the facil.io C framework should be placed in the facil.io repository.

  • Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/boazsegev/iodine.

  • If we can write a Java wrapper for the facil.io C framework, it would be nice... but it could be as big a project as the whole gem, as a lot of minor details are implemented within the bridge between these two languages.

  • If you love the project or thought the code was nice, maybe helped you in your own project, drop me a line. I'd love to know.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.