Module http

ballerina/http Ballerina library

1.1.0-alpha8

Package Overview

This package provides an implementation for connecting and interacting with HTTP and HTTP2 endpoints. The package facilitates two types of network entry points as ‘Client’ and ‘Listener’.

Client

The Client is used to connect to and interact with HTTP endpoints. They support connection pooling and can be configured to have a maximum number of active connections that can be made with the remote endpoint. The Client activates connection eviction after a given idle period and also supports follow-redirects so that the users do not have to manually handle 3xx HTTP status codes.

The Client handles resilience in multiple ways such as load balancing, circuit breaking, endpoint timeouts, and a retry mechanism.

Load balancing is used in the round robin or failover manner.

When a failure occurs in the remote service, the client connections might wait for some time before a timeout occurs. Awaiting requests consume resources in the system. Circuit Breakers are used to trip after a certain number of failed requests to the remote service. Once a circuit breaker trips, it does not allow the client to send requests to the remote service for a period of time.

The Ballerina circuit breaker supports tripping on HTTP error status codes and I/O errors. Failure thresholds can be configured based on a sliding window (e.g., 5 failures within 10 seconds). Client endpoints also support a retry mechanism that allows a client to resend failed requests periodically for a given number of times.

The Client supports Server Name Indication (SNI), Certificate Revocation List (CRL), Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP), and OCSP Stapling for SSL/TLS connections. They also support HTTP2, keep-alive, chunking, HTTP caching, data compression/decompression, and authentication/authorization.

A Client can be defined using the URL of the remote service that the client needs to connect with, as shown below:

http:Client|http:ClientError clientEndpoint = new("https://my-simple-backend.com");

The defined Client endpoint can be used to call a remote service as follows:

// Send a GET request to the specified endpoint. http:Response|http:ClientError response = clientEndpoint->get("/get?id=123");

For more information, see the following.

Listener

A Service represents a collection of network-accessible entry points and can be exposed via a Listener endpoint. A resource represents one such entry point and can have its own path, HTTP methods, body format, 'consumes' and 'produces' content types, CORS headers, etc. In resources, http:caller and http:Request are mandatory parameters while path and body are optional.

When a Service receives a request, it is dispatched to the best-matched resource.

A Listener endpoint can be defined as follows:

Copy
// Attributes associated with the `Listener` endpoint are defined here.
listener http:Listener helloWorldEP = new(9090);

Then a Service can be defined and attached to the above Listener endpoint as shown below:

Copy
// By default, Ballerina assumes that the service is to be exposed via HTTP/1.1.
service /helloWorld on helloWorldEP {

   resource function post [string name](@http:Payload string message) returns string {
       // Sends the response back to the client along with a string payload.
       return "Hello, World! I’m " + name + ". " + message;
   }
}

See the following.

Listener endpoints can be exposed via SSL. They support Mutual SSL, Hostname Verification, and Application Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) for HTTP2. Listener endpoints also support Certificate Revocation List (CRL), Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP), OCSP Stapling, HTTP2, keep-alive, chunking, HTTP caching, data compression/decompression, and authentication/authorization.

For more information, see Mutual SSL Example.

For more information, see Caching Example, HTTP Disable Chunking Example.

Import

import ballerina/http;Copy

Metadata

Released date: almost 3 years ago

Version: 1.1.0-alpha8


Compatibility

Platform: java11

Ballerina version: slalpha5

GraalVM compatible: Yes


Pull count

Total: 781797

Current verison: 1440


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