Add Architecture doc

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Tatsuhiro Tsujikawa 2016-02-14 18:23:28 +09:00
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Programmers' Guide
==================
Architecture
------------
The most notable point in nghttp2 library architecture is it does not
perform any I/O. nghttp2 only performs HTTP/2 protocol stuff based on
input byte strings. It will calls callback functions set by
applications while processing input. The output of nghttp2 is just
byte string. An application is responsible to send these output to
the remote peer. The callback functions may be called while producing
output.
Not doing I/O makes embedding nghttp2 library in the existing code
base very easy. Usually, the existing applications have its own I/O
event loops. It is very hard to use nghttp2 in that situation if
nghttp2 does its own I/O. It also makes light weight language wrapper
for nghttp2 easy with the same reason. The down side is that an
application author has to write more code to write complete
application using nghttp2. This is especially true for simple "toy"
application. For the real applications, however, this is not the
case. This is because you probably want to support HTTP/1 which
nghttp2 does not provide, and to do that, you will need to write your
own HTTP/1 stack or use existing third-party library, and bind them
together with nghttp2 and I/O event loop. In this point, not
performing I/O in nghttp2 has more point than doing it.
The primary object that an application uses is :type:`nghttp2_session`
object, which is opaque struct and its details are hidden in order to
ensure the upgrading its internal architecture without breaking the
backward compatibility. An application can set callbacks to
:type:`nghttp2_session` object through the dedicated object and
functions, and it also interacts with it via many API function calls.
An application can create as many :type:`nghttp2_session` object as it
wants. But single :type:`nghttp2_session` object must be used by a
single thread at the same time. This is not so hard to enforce since
most event-based architecture applicatons use is single thread per
core, and handling one connection I/O is done by single thread.
To feed input to :type:`nghttp2_session` object, one can use
`nghttp2_session_recv()` or `nghttp2_session_mem_recv()` functions.
They behave similarly, and the difference is that
`nghttp2_session_recv()` will use :type:`nghttp2_read_callback` to get
input. On the other hand, `nghttp2_session_mem_recv()` will take
input as its parameter. If in doubt, use `nghttp2_session_mem_recv()`
since it is simpler, and could be faster since it avoids calling
callback function.
To get output from :type:`nghttp2_session` object, one can use
`nghttp2_session_send()` or `nghttp2_session_mem_send()`. The
difference between them is that the former uses
:type:`nghttp2_send_callback` to pass output to an application. On
the other hand, the latter returns the output to the caller. If in
doubt, use `nghttp2_session_mem_send()` since it is simpler. But
`nghttp2_session_send()` might be easier to use if the output buffer
an application has is fixed sized.
Includes
--------