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DEVELOPING APP-BACKENDS WITH SWIFT ON THE SERVER

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ABOUT ME Benedikt Terhechte Hirundo SourceKittenDaemon CoreValue Indie Developer @terhechte appventure.me

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SERVER DEVELOPMENT ➤ Worked many years as a backend developer ➤ Kept an active interest in server development afterwards ➤ Developed in ➤ Python + Django ➤ Scala + Scalatra ➤ Clojure ➤ Go + Revel ➤ Lua + Openresty ➤ PHP + Symfony

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SWIFT ON THE SERVER? WHY? There are already tons of solutions

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GO

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GO THREE REASONS

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“There’s a real desire among developers for less fractionalization in programming -Kyle Jessup Founder, Perfect Framework

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CURRENT FULL STACK SETUP ➤ Ruby on the Server ➤ Javascript in the Frontend ➤ SQL in the Database ➤ CSS & HTML in the Frontend ➤ Java for the Android solution ➤ Swift for the iOS Solution ➤ Thats 7 Languages! ➤ New devices, new paradigms (VR), more languages ➤ Should strife for less 1.

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CODE SHARING ➤ Builds upon the first reason ➤ Share code among different targets ➤ Saves time ➤ Less Bugs 2.

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SWIFT ➤ Swift is a great language ➤ Faster than Ruby or Python ➤ Consumes less memory ➤ Strong Types ➤ Modern language features 3.

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WEB FRAMEWORKS

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WHAT’S A WEB FRAMEWORK ➤ Just like cocoa touch or cocoa ➤ Support the development of web applications and web APIs

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DB Browser Request Server Framework Code REQUEST / RESPONSE FLOW CHART

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DB Browser Request Server Framework Code REQUEST / RESPONSE FLOW CHART

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SWIFT WEB FRAMEWORKS

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PERFECT ➤ 8200 GitHub Stars ➤ "Perfect is a complete and powerful toolbox, framework, and application server for Linux, iOS, and macOS (OS X)."

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VAPOR ➤ "A pure Swift & modular Web Framework that works on iOS, macOS, and Ubuntu." ➤ Very modular ➤ Beautiful API

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KITURA ➤ "Kitura is a web framework and web server that is created for web services written in Swift." ➤ Backed by IBM ➤ IBM is investing heavily into Kitura ➤ Kitura's developers also contribute to Swift in order to improve Linux support

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MANY MORE ➤ Swifton: https://github.com/necolt/Swifton (1994 Stars) ➤ Zewo: https://github.com/Zewo/Zewo (1215 Stars) ➤ Blackfish: https://github.com/elliottminns/blackfish (924 Stars) ➤ Slimane: https://github.com/noppoMan/Slimane (61 Stars) ➤ Tailor: https://github.com/brownleej/tailor (55 Stars) ➤ Kunugi: https://github.com/novi/Kunugi (36 Stars) ➤ Quark: https://github.com/QuarkX/Quark (31 Stars)

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FIRST VERDICT ➤ The major frameworks have around 20.000 GitHub Stars together ➤ Ruby on Rails has 31.000 ➤ Huge interest (already) in Swift Server development

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WEB FRAMEWORK FEATURES

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➤ All Swift frameworks support different features ➤ Depending on your use case, this may help you decide on a framework ➤ Most frameworks are still kinda in development or 1.0 ➤ Many features are only partially implemented

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➤ Take with grain of salt ➤ Status quo may already have changed between my research and this talk

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USER AUTHENTICATION ➤ Log a user in, keep a user logged in, log him out, access a user ➤ Via email / password or i.e. Google / Twitter / Facebook (OAuth) ➤ Perfect, Vapor

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RAW DATABASE SUPPORT Feature MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Redis RethinkDB Cassandra CouchDB Filemaker Perfect Vapor Kitura Zewo

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ORM ➤ Database Abstraction, like Core Data ➤ Spares you from writing custom SQL ➤ Vapor

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ROUTING ➤ Interpret visitor input URLs ➤ Parse them ➤ Retrieve parameters ➤ /users/23/posts/144/ comments/12 ➤ user_id: 23, post_id: 144, comment_id: 12 ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Kitura, Zewo

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CRUD ➤ Create, Read, Update, Delete ➤ Inherit from a class to automatically gain CRUD ➤ Auto-generate routes ➤ /users/:id/delete ➤ Vapor

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SESSIONS ➤ Sessions allow associating stateful information with individual visitors ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Kitura, Zewo

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LOGIC-LESS TEMPLATES ➤ Syntax for search & replace placeholders in HTML Files ➤ Templates without the notion of if / else conditions ➤ “Mustache” ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Kitura, Zewo

{{header}}

{{#empty}}

The list is empty.

{{/empty}}

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TURING TEMPLATES ➤ Conditionals ➤ Loops ➤ Vapor #if(entering) { Hello, #(friend-name)! } ##else() { Goodbye, #(friend-name)! } #loop(friends, "friend") {
  • #(friend.name)
    • }

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    MIDDLEWARE ➤ Custom code which can be injected to run before and after each request / response cycle ➤ Examples: ➤ Authentication ➤ Security ➤ Caching ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Kitura, Zewo

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    LOCALISATION ➤ drop.localization[lang, "welcome", "title"], ➤ Vapor "welcome": { "title": "Welcome!", "body": "A web framework" } "welcome": { "title": "¡Bienvenidos!", "body": "Un framework web" }

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    WEB SOCKETS ➤ “Full-Duplex communication channels over single TCP connection” ➤ Real-time data transfer from / to server ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Zewo

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    DEPLOYMENT Method Heroku Docker AWS Apache Nginx Bluemix Perfect Vapor Kitura Zewo

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    MISC ➤ File Uploads ➤ JSON Encoding / Decoding ➤ File Uploads ➤ Perfect, Vapor, Kitura, Zewo

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    MISSING FEATURES ➤ Database Migrations ➤ Scaffolding ➤ Asset Pipeline / Build System ➤ Admin Tool ➤ Sitemaps ➤ Hot Reloading of Code ➤ Reloading of HTML / CSS / JS

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    REMARKS ➤ All Frameworks use the Swift Package Manager ➤ Vapor, Kitura, and Zewo use OpenSwift for compatibility. This means that middleware, requests, responses, and other objects are based on the same protocols and can be interchanged.

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    PERFORMANCE

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    BENCHMARKS ARE DIFFICULT ➤ There’re Swift Web Framework benchmark, but they were performed on macOS. The system and performance differs from Linux. Swift is better optimised for macOS ➤ Others only compare limited frameworks or lack the knowledge to implement the benchmark test correctly in the comparison languages ➤ One side will always be unhappy about the comparison

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    TECH EMPOWER BENCHMARK ➤ It compares ~40 frameworks. ➤ It has very strict rules ➤ Optimized & tested heavily by lots of users ➤ www.techempower.com/ benchmarks

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    STATE ➤ I’ve implemented the Techempower Plaintext benchmarks for Perfect, Kitura, and Vapor ➤ I’ve then compared Swift Web Frameworks to the competition as tested by Techempower ➤ Keep in mind ➤ Swift for Linux is new. ➤ The frameworks are all in development ➤ I’ve tested this on other hardware than Techempower ($5 digital ocean droplets vs. AWS c3.large) ➤ I ran less tests (only plaintext)

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    THE SWIFT FRAMEWORKS 0 70000 140000 210000 280000 Swift: Vapor Swift: Kitura Swift: Perfect Plaintext

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    SWIFT VS OTHER “MODERN” LANGUAGES Ruby: rails-unicorn Rust: iron Groovy: grails Javascript: express Javascript: nodejs Clojure: http-kit Elixir: Cowboy Swift: Vapor Swift: Kitura Scala: Play2 Swift: Perfect Go: falcore Go: gin Go: Raw 0 250000 500000 750000 1000000 Plaintext

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    SWIFT VS THE FASTEST Clojure: http-kit Elixir: Cowboy Swift: Vapor Swift: Kitura php5 Java: Play2 Scala: Play2 Swift: Perfect Python: bottle Lua: lapis Go: falcore Python: falcon ur/web Go: gin Go: Raw Lua: openresty Java: servlet Java: vertx Java: netty 0 1250000 2500000 3750000 5000000 Plaintext

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    PHP laravel Erlang: chicagoboss Ruby: rails-unicorn PHP: hhvm Ruby: sinatra-trinidad Java: ninja-standalone Rust: iron Python: flask Groovy: grails Javascript: express Javascript: nodejs Clojure: http-kit Elixir: Cowboy Swift: Vapor Swift: Kitura php5 Java: Play2 Scala: Play2 Swift: Perfect 0 75000 150000 225000 300000 Plaintext SWIFT VS COMMON SOLUTIONS

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    Vapor (currently) offers the most features Some code examples of common features with Vapor

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    HELLO WORLD

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    TYPE-SAFE ROUTING Type-safe routing. This will only be called if the `number` parameter is indeed an integer

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    RESPONSE CONFORMANCE PROTOCOL

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    RESPONSE CONFORMANCE PROTOCOL

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    RESPONSE CONFORMANCE PROTOCOL

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    DEFAULT ARGUMENTS

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    VALIDATION

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    MIDDLEWARE

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    MIDDLEWARE

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    MIDDLEWARE

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    AUTHENTICATION

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    AUTHENTICATION

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    AUTHENTICATION

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    QUESTION GAME

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    SHARING CODE: DEMO

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    CAN WE USE THIS?

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    GENERAL ➤ Early, but exciting ➤ Up until Swift 3 GM, Swift changed a lot ➤ Frameworks had to adopt to these changes ➤ Frameworks are still changing. Not stable yet. ➤ Outdated examples, docs, and tutorials ➤ Xcode's SourceKitD crashes far more often than during iOS development

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    WHICH FRAMEWORK ➤ If you’re creating a simple API service and really care about performance, go with Perfect ➤ Otherwise, Vapor is the best solution ➤ Keep an eye on Kitura, IBM is investing heavily

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    SHOULD YOU CHOOSE SWIFT? ➤ It depends ➤ On how much frontend code you have ➤ On how polyglot your team is ➤ On how much shared code you expect ➤ On how much you love Swift ➤ Expect to refactor

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    CONSIDERATIONS ➤ No UIKit / AppKit dependency: You can use value types, protocols & generics ➤ Test under Linux. There’re still differences even in Foundation. ➤ Prefer abstractions provided by the framework ➤ Learn from the Vapor source code. It is insightful.

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    DOCUMENTATION ➤ Documentation is lacking for all frameworks. ➤ Possible approaches: ➤ Scout GitHub for Sample repos (though oftentimes they're outdated) ➤ Read unit tests ➤ Read Pull Requests for features. Oftentimes, they include basic usage instructions ➤ Read the source

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    TIPS ➤ Use Swiftenv to manage Swift versions ➤ Watch this years WWDC Swift performance talks ➤ If you don't want to install Linux to run things, use Docker ➤ Will post links to Slides & Code on Twitter: @terhechte