Easy-to-use basic C++ webserver library using boost::beast.
BeastHTTPServer is a library that wraps a boost::beast asynchronous HTTP server into an easy-to-use API. While boost::beast is a great library, it provides it high-level functionality in a rather low-level way and is rather intimidating to use if you just want to get a webserver running in C++. BeastHTTPServer aims to provide a simple API in order to do just that. It is not intended to wrap all boost::beast functionality, but made easy to modify if you want to roll your own variant.
Currently, BeastHTTPServer works for creating simple HTTP servers with basic routing.
Pull requests are welcome. I will provide some more usage examples in the future. Please note that this library is still in early development and the API might change. Please consider copying the code into your own project so your project doesn't break on changes.
#include "BeastHTTPServer.hpp"
const HTTPRoute helloWorldRoute = {
.method = http::verb::get,
.path = "/",
.handler = [](HttpRequest& req) {
HttpResponse res;
res.body() = "Hello world!";
res.prepare_payload();
return res;
}
};
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
auto params = std::make_shared<HTTPServerParams>(HTTPServerParams{
.endpoint = tcp::endpoint(
net::ip::make_address("0.0.0.0"),
18080
),
.routes = {
helloWorldRoute
}
});
// Runs only in the main thread
BeastHTTPServer server(params);
server.RunBlocking();
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}For more examples, see the examples directory.
This performance test was performed with the hello-world example (single-threaded, standard compiler flags, Ubuntu 22.04, Core i7-6700). Test performed on git revision 416caa0.
siege -t 10s -c 255 http://localhost:18080Output:
{ "transactions": 46786,
"availability": 100.00,
"elapsed_time": 9.17,
"data_transferred": 0.54,
"response_time": 0.05,
"transaction_rate": 5102.07,
"throughput": 0.06,
"concurrency": 253.59,
"successful_transactions": 46786,
"failed_transactions": 0,
"longest_transaction": 0.12,
"shortest_transaction": 0.00
}This performance test was performed with the hello-world example (standard compiler flags, Ubuntu 22.04, Core i7-6700) with
server.StartThreads(7);added just before server.RunBlocking(). Test performed on git revision 416caa0.
In effect, this runs 8 threads on my 8-core i7-6700 CPU.
siege -t 10s -c 255 http://localhost:18080{ "transactions": 80709,
"availability": 100.00,
"elapsed_time": 9.43,
"data_transferred": 0.92,
"response_time": 0.03,
"transaction_rate": 8558.75,
"throughput": 0.10,
"concurrency": 253.48,
"successful_transactions": 80709,
"failed_transactions": 0,
"longest_transaction": 0.12,
"shortest_transaction": 0.01
}The source code for this is identical to the multi-threaded hello-world (see above), but with
target_compile_options(hello-world PRIVATE -O3 -march=native -ffast-math)added to the CMakeLists.txt in the hello-world directory. Test performed on git revision 416caa0.
Using
siege -q -t 10s -c 1000 http://localhost:18080
we can achieve
{ "transactions": 132258,
"availability": 100.00,
"elapsed_time": 9.69,
"data_transferred": 1.51,
"response_time": 0.02,
"transaction_rate": 13648.92,
"throughput": 0.16,
"concurrency": 253.44,
"successful_transactions": 132258,
"failed_transactions": 0,
"longest_transaction": 0.12,
"shortest_transaction": 0.00
}More than 13500 requests per second using this very simple program is quite impressive.
This test was performed with the Optimized hello-world example (see above). . Test performed on git revision 416caa0.
siege was configured to use 1000 concurrent connections using
siege -q -t 10s -c 1000 http://localhost:18080The server still maintained a 100% availability and achieved a transaction rate of 1.3 million transactions per second.
{ "transactions": 86577,
"availability": 100.00,
"elapsed_time": 9.32,
"data_transferred": 0.99,
"response_time": 0.11,
"transaction_rate": 9289.38,
"throughput": 0.11,
"concurrency": 981.52,
"successful_transactions": 86577,
"failed_transactions": 0,
"longest_transaction": 0.52,
"shortest_transaction": 0.00
}