Rust Programming Language Rust Hungary Meetup, 23 Nov 2017

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Péter Czibik - Fast & Safe Native node.js Modules with Rust (Rust Hungary #3, 2017-11-23)

Description

Fast and Safe native modules in a node.js application? Péter Czibik will show us how to achieve both with Rust and hand-rolled native node.js extensions, or by using the Rust NEON wrapper library.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QWJ_4H3NqOm9z6198X1Cy5I9lKbpndEtSIpxs_jPdAo/

[Rust Hungary Meetup #3, 2017-11-23, Mozilla Hungary Community Space, Budapest]
http://rust-lang.hu/posts/2017-11-22/meetup-03-rust-hungary.en.html
https://www.meetup.com/Rust-Hungary-Meetup/events/244411460/

A

Watch out for that and watch out for their GIS modules in.

B

So I'm here and I'm here to talk about fast and safe native modules and nodejs, and actually it's it's a case study is how people call it and I just call it my story. This is my story. How I actually started working on something rusty, I've been I've been looking forward to this, that this thing for a long time have been like poking around the project.

B

I've been checking out when the Ross book came out, I started reading it, but it's been so long time since since then and I haven't found a real use case and we've been discussing in the breaks that right now, not many people can afford to start the project over and like just write some things from scratch. So that is why rust is is a super cool language, because you can just write a module and expose it into your existing platform existing language and then call it from that. We're gonna see how I did it.

B

So it's me you can find me on Twitter and on the github and I work for a company. That's logo is over there rising stack. We work with nodejs, which is kind of invisible here, but so what I do is I describe it I build stuff on the internet. That I can't show my mom, because it's invisible, I'm a back-end engineer, mostly working on infrastructure and I work with this lovely language that we've heard so much about today. Well, you know how it works and some more I'll stop bashing it in a few seconds.

B

So it's not the story about JavaScript and nodejs, but it's a story about how how I hit the wall once with no js'. It's actually me, but something like that. So we've been working on a monitoring product which you know, application monitoring is kind of a hard issue to solve, because we have like processes that we have to watch and how they work, how they operate.

B

And then they in our specific example, they reported once every minute and then you know, 60 processes will then make up one request per second on average, and you know a customer can have up to like hundreds of process to like from one to hundred, and that makes up for like an average of 630 processes per customer and that's got the scale right. So we've been trying to engineer an infrastructure that that can work for huge HTTP load and we've been.

B

We went with an approach called micro services, and that means that we split out most of the stuff. We have and then communicate over HTTP in between those services and- and that is that is one part of the architecture that we wanted this here and also.

C

B

Logo is again not really visible, but as many of the cool startups back in the day we went with Heroku because we wanted to spare some some of the costs of maintaining infrastructure and also like well yeah.

B

It's just the infrastructure really that we wanted to cut a few dollars at and then, if you want to use micro service architecture with with Heroku you're, just gonna end up like this, because you have to solve one thing in that's authentication because Heroku you don't have you don't have a VPN, so you don't have private networking and then, if you want to call like in between these services, you want to communicate securely. Then then it's going to be just a real pain. We we went with HTTP signatures.

B

We tried a few other things and we. What we did at the end is that we, you know you take the body, you take the parameters, you you take the headers and then you sign it with a key and what we've noticed after some time is that these signatures were were really really slow to validate. But you can say that well, of course, you've been doing crypto and crypto in most languages really sought because it's gonna be really slow, but you know as it's fine, because you only do it once a request right.

C

B

We've been doing crypto and we've been doing HTTP signatures and we've noticed that our RPS, just like was like that, and we figured that it's not actually the crypto that says get that is slowing it down. But you were up for saying we have. You were a parser expert over here and well.

B

He knows how how how how slow it is and how how it is a really complex task actually to get to know how these things work and they have a really really long specification that III really wanted to to read it to, but it had so many external links that it was like no I can do it. So, let's look on the internet for some for for some already existing solution and I found Google URL. Oh my god, this is gonna, be so awesome.

B

I'm, just gonna use this C++ library over here and then you know it's just use the and the API, which is a C++ thing that binds to v8 and they extract so a v8 I pre, probably know if you've ever worked. C++. You probably know this comic: how to learn C++ in 21 days and at the end, it's like you just got a time-travel, go back and then kill your younger self.

C

B

Well, C++ is complicated and I've I have never received any formal education on C, your C++. So even that I bought the book you know and I was.

B

Yeah so um I tried to compile it. I just got stuck somehow in the washing machine. It didn't work out so well so yeah I expected to skyrocket and then I just like no, it's not the thing. There should be something that is fast and safe. I know something that's really fast.

B

This is a Kawasaki Ninja h2, which is which goes at like 300 kilometers per hour and then I know something that's safe, which is 2017, Toyota Corolla, which was the safest car in 2017, but I know one thing that is also fast and safe, and that is rust. So I ended up using this roast. You know, probably it's a systems, programming, language that aims to be safe and current fast.

B

B

We have multiple ways actually to call from nodejs to call into rust that we're going to see today, one of them being is a foreign function interface, which is like a common.

B

It's a common interface like it's, it's a common thing to use the interface in between the languages and it's quite a little level, but it can be used in multiple platforms. So it's not only for nodejs. If you write a module that that exposes its functions to an F, if I, then you can call it from Python or any other language, yeah and but there's more sillier serialization that we have to do if you use.

B

If we use this, there's another really cool project that I'm going to show in today's demo, and it's called me on and what neon does? Is it abstracts away, v8 types that we can use from from nodejs, and then it integrates much better, so it it is Roscoe that we write that integrates much better with the VA types that we are used to using energy is much tighter integration and, let's hop into some demo. What we have over here is the FFI library we've seen some of these things today. Already.

B

D

Have to use an ohm angle.

B

For to keep the names and and stuff like that, and then we have to, if you look at the top, you have to use the leap secret which which has a few things from so it is used to access, see type like over there, and then we can just parse. So we get like a car pointer over there and we can craft a C string, but we have to wrap it into an unsafe block, because it's we're using raw pointers over there shaky at times and there's the URL module from the from the servo team.

B

And then it is a super cool and super fast URL parser that I I've picked to demonstrate this and we can expose. So we just return a new C string and we can get.

B

There is some other thing, so this is the rossport and to access it from the OGS. We can just use the FFI package and we have to give it the compiled binaries path and we have to give it the name of the function that we would like to call and the the parameters it takes and what it returns. And then we can just expose it as any other node module that we would would do otherwise. So this was the FFI cord and you can see if we go back to the.

B

If we check the neon part, neon actually has a really good CLI tool that you can just npm install and then it generates you, the project structure for you and also like it, has its own build command that we can use.

B

And if we look into the native folder over here, we have the source file and then, instead of having to do any kind of realization, we can just you can just use v8 types directly and we can craft v8j s strings and we don't have to implement every so in JavaScript were used to having like functions that take any kind of arguments. And if you look into this one, this this function takes a call which is, if.

C

B

If you have done any kind of programming in v8, this is kind of the same thing. We can access the scope and then we can get the arguments which is kind of shaky over there, but it works and at the end we can just return the JavaScript string and- and it's going to work.

B

Is to go into each of the.

B

Sony on and then neon Bo, so we don't have to worry about configure, and this was this was a real selling point for me, because I'm not languages, I've been I've, been working with nodejs for three years now, and for me at this whole C++ and like the compilers and stuff like that, they were super scary and I know for a lot of people. They are, and this neon project had like a CLI tool that generated everything for me and they didn't have to worry about actually learning all those bits and pieces.

B

I could just hop in write. Some Rosco would call it from no jst. I was done with it. So.

B

Benchmarking, so I'm, just generating I, have a script to generate a few hundreds or all it's configurable. But there.

C

B

You are else to generate, and then I can run all the tests functions on that and I I. Try it just once, but you can set the try count. You can increase that so it parse is the same over and over again we're going to see why that is important, I'm just requiring it is. If you have ever written no js' code, you can. You can already see that this integrates really well with it, and what I was thinking about is just setting up a bit type line.

B

That I could create a wrapper around raus, raus URL and then just publish it the NPM. So anyone can use it if if they want so they are just exposed and then I'm benchmarking and running it a few times to see how fast they run.

B

If I try to run it with I can run it with just a single URL. You can see that the native this is a time it takes for them to parse it, and then the native URL parse was actually the native I mean it is the one that's built into nodejs and the rust FFI one took a bit longer than me on its big, mostly because of the serialization of this, and if I try to increase it, we can see as we, the native URL pores is actually getting.

C

B

Fastest because of the v8 that it's going on, so there are a bunch.

C

B

Optimizations that we can do and we have to take the right tool for the right job that we have, but as we as you see the rust well, those those parts are not optimized by the Java, the v8 JIT, but we can do other optimizations on the rough side if we want to so what I wanted to say about all these things. Where here is the average time it took trigger supports as we went up, it v8 actually won, but it's not.

B

It was just a demonstration of things that we can do. There are other ways to optimize this, but what I wanted to say is that rust brings new opportunities.

B

It opens new windows that that we can use to optimize or existing code bases and, and it allows anyone to to leverage this new, these new opportunities, because before we've Ross, we've had to go through and kill ourselves from the future just to learn C++, but right now we have this a lot more approachable language without without those build tools, without that steep learning curve and and I think this right now.

B

It allowed me to someone, without without a higher level, C++ knowledge to dig down to that level and do some weird optimizations, which was really cool and I, also had fun. So I encourage everyone to try Ross, because if I can rust, so can you and thank you.

A

B

B

D

D

B

Which lifts performance.

B

No, but we have a developer here that we might be able to ask if you have any questions.

B

Just super cool.

D

So I'm just curious: why exactly the is the neon your parser faster than the FFI one? Is it because it gets the like the return value from the scope and it doesn't have to allocate or or am I misunderstanding, this.

B

I'll be honest, I don't know, but I can guess so.

C

I haven't done.

B

I haven't done much research on these things. My guess is that so, when you use the FFI layer.

B

There's there's just gonna so on. Well, let's approach it from the other side, if you, if you use, if you use it from VA I've written native modules with C++ before and I know, when you bind it to v8 scopes, and then you create allocate objects on that side, then it's gonna. It's gonna be just much more integrated into the garbage collection and stuff like that. So it's it's just gonna be like more optimized that way, but I, don't know why the why why we?

B

It cannot optimize these these things because it looked like even though, even though it could optimize the native code, it couldn't optimize the one that hooks in a v8. So maybe that's like not even true but I. Think it's because actually using the.

A

Anybody any more questions. Okay, thank you. So much for all our presenters, I think.