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dslam

A toy express/sinatra style framework for writing webservices in C++11.

DSLAM is a C++11 implementation of the sinatra/express idea for writing route based web services. It was written for a presentation to the NYC C++ Meetup on C++11 features in practice. There was a great series of earlier group meetups where we reviewed the new features in C++11 and its standard library. However, hearing about a feature in a lecture doesn't always help you do anything with it, or to see how it integrates with other features, etc. So I wrote DSLAM to play around with C++11 features, and then presented it to the meetup so that we could talk about those features in the context of "real" code. People after the meetup asked me to put it up on github, so here it is!

Because this was done specifically to experiment with C++11 features, there are several places where C++11 features are used even though they aren't stricly necessary, or perhaps even advisable. I'm using the 'using' syntax to declare all typedefs, even when that is not needed (no templates involved). All functions are declared with late return types as well. I'm not necessarily recommending this, but it does lead to interesting looking code.

If you want to build DSLAM, there are several annoying prerequisites:

  • A working C++11 compiler.

  • Boost 1.50.0 or greater, plus the fix for https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/2792 if it is not fixed in your boost version. You will want to compile boost with -std=c++11.

  • My C++11 port of the PION network library, built against the standalone ASIO library. You can get it from the standalone branch of my github fork of PION. You will also need any dependencies of PION, which is mostly boost. You will need to configure it with -std=c++11 in the CXXFLAGS for it to build.

  • The standalone ASIO library

  • google-test, again compiled with -std=c++11. At least for me, with clang -std=c++11 I needed to give it -DGTEST_HAS_TR1_TUPLE=0 -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE.

There are also several slightly less annoying dependencies. As long as you have these in reasonable places, things should just work. I developed DSLAM on Mac OS X Lion, so I obtained these via MacPorts:

  • CMake
  • OpenSSL (Or just tell PION not to use it)

If you are on Mac OS X and you are using macports, you can make your life somewhat easier by hacking up portconfigure.tcl and adding "-std=c++11" to your configure.cxxflags. That way you can build boost and google-test via "port -s install" and get them properly C++11-ified. You can drop the boost patch into your /opt/local/include directory after the build; it doesn't seem to be used by any libraries so this should be harmless. In addition, if you are on Mac OS X, you can really live on the edge and add -stdlib=libc++ to your configure.cxxflags as well. If you do that, remember to definitely pass that flag to your builds of PION and DSLAM as well.

Once you have all of that in place you should be able to generate files for your preferred build system like so:

C=<path-to-c-compiler> CXX=<path-to-c++11-compiler> CXXFLAGS="-std=c++11" cmake
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=<CMakeBuildVariant>
-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<PIONInstallPath>
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<DSLAMInstallPath>
../..

Note that you need to pass -std=c++11 here as well: CMake doesn't currently have a portable way of enabling C++11 mode, and I haven't tried to produce one.

Once cmake generates, a make all test install should get you a compiled DSLAM if you are using the Unix Makefile generator. If you are using something else I presume you know what to do. A sucessful build should get you a libdslam.[so|dylib], and a nyccpp_meetup_example executable. Run the example program and give it a port via the --port argument. It exposes the following routes:

  • /api/hello - Replies with the text "Hello, World!\n"
  • /api/hitcounter - Replies with text describing what URLs the server has handled
  • /api/rtest/ARG1/ARG2 - Replies with text describing ARG1 and ARG2
  • /api/users/:name - Replies with "Hello, !\n"
  • /block/:duration - Blocks the server thread for the specified duration, then replies.
  • /block_in_thread/:duration - Like above, but sleeps in another thread to not block the server.
  • /block_in_thread2/:duration - Like above, but different result dispatching mechanism.
  • /chunks - Demonstrates a chunked reply as a buildup to async
  • /resolve/:host - Shows how to interoperate with an async API by demoing boost::asio resolvers.

There are a few unit tests, but mostly just to ensure that google-test and CTest are working. I plan to write more that actually test out the service framework.

I wrote DSLAM on a Mac OS X Lion machine. I haven't tried building it on Linux yet, but I plan to do that when I have some time.

This code is in no way production quality and shouldn't be used for anything.