Development with Vert.x: an event-driven application framework for the JVM

For a long time JVM developers have been sitting out watching web developers write agile and performant applications with frameworks such as node.js. Fortunately this is no longer the case. Vert.x is a powerful, bleeding edge event-driven application framework for the JVM. It features native support for non-blocking I/O and concurrency. It has a distributed event bus that that allows real-time communication between client and server. In addition to including out-of-the-box modules for easy development, vert.x has a module system that enables code reuse. To be even more cool, vert.x is polyglot, supporting components written in different languages such as Javascript, Ruby, and Python. In this speech I will give an overview of the vert.x framework and some of the caveats that you should be aware of.

Transcript

1. Development with Vert.x: an event-driven application framework for the JVM David Wu @wuman blog.wu-man.com Taiwan Java User Group (2013/06/29) 1 Monday, July 1, 13
2. about.me/wuman 2 Monday, July 1, 13
3. What is Vert.x? 3 Monday, July 1, 13
4. What most people will tell you about Vert.x • A general-purpose application framework running on JVM • Performant: asynchronous APIs, event-driven, non-blocking, etc. • Highly scalable but also easy to implement concurrency • Polyglot: intermix Java, JS, Ruby, Groovy, Python, etc. 4 Monday, July 1, 13
5. What I think about Vert.x • All-in-one framework that allows you to focus on your application rather than fiddling with different technologies • Business friendly Apache License 2.0 • Loose coupling modules that interoperate in a system 5 Monday, July 1, 13
6. Background on the C10K Problem 6 Monday, July 1, 13
7. Shift from Threading to Asynchronous the story of switching from Apache to Node.js 7 Monday, July 1, 13
8. The inevitable comparison to Node.js • A single event loop serving a high volume of connections via an asynchronous programming model • Most of the real work are done in a pool of background threads 8 Monday, July 1, 13
9. Asynchronous Programming Model vertx.createHttpServer().requestHandler( new Handler<HttpServerRequest>() { public void handle(HttpServerRequest request) { log.info("A request has arrived on the server!"); request.response().end(); } } ).listen(8080, "localhost"); 9 Monday, July 1, 13
10. But there are 3 problems with Node.js 10 Monday, July 1, 13
11. Problems with Node.js • Well, it’s not Java (and this is a Java User Group) • Does not easily scale both vertically and horizontally • Single event loop fails when you have CPU- intensive tasks or 3rd-party blocking APIs 11 Monday, July 1, 13
12. Vert.x to the rescue • Use all available cores on a single machine • Horizontally scale out to multiple boxes • Allow blocking calls to NOT run on an event loop 12 Monday, July 1, 13
13. Introduction to Vert.x instance and Verticles Verticle Verticle Worker Verticle Worker Verticle Vert.x instance 13 Monday, July 1, 13
14. Verticles are extremely isolated • Verticles are isolated with separate class loaders • A verticle never gets executed by more than one thread concurrently • No race conditions, no deadlocks. You write your code as single threaded. 14 Monday, July 1, 13
15. What about communication? 15 Monday, July 1, 13
16. Message Passing via the Event Bus Verticle Verticle Worker Verticle Worker Verticle Vert.x instance 16 Monday, July 1, 13
17. Very Powerful Event Bus Verticle Verticle Worker Verticle Verticle Verticle Worker Verticle 17 Monday, July 1, 13
18. Registering a Message Handler EventBus eb = vertx.eventBus(); Handler<Message> myHandler = new Handler<Message>() { public void handle(Message message) { System.out.println("I received a message " + message.body); } }; eb.registerHandler("test.address", myHandler); 18 Monday, July 1, 13
19. Message Types • Primitives and their boxed types • String • org.vertx.java.core.json.JsonObject • org.vertx.java.core.json.JsonArray • org.vertx.java.core.buffer.Buffer 19 Monday, July 1, 13
20. Pub/Sub Model eb.publish("test.address", "hello world"); 20 Monday, July 1, 13
21. Point-to-Point Model eb.send("test.address", "This is a message", new Handler<Message<String>>() { public void handle(Message<String> message) { System.out.println("I received a reply " + message.body); } }); EventBus eb = vertx.eventBus(); Handler<Message> myHandler = new Handler<Message>() { public void handle(Message message) { System.out.println("I received a message " + message.body); message.reply("This is a reply"); } }; eb.registerHandler("test.address", myHandler); 21 Monday, July 1, 13
22. Shared Maps and Sets ConcurrentMap<String, Integer> map = vertx.sharedData().getMap("demo.mymap"); map.put("some-key", 123); Set<String> set = vertx.sharedData().getSet("demo.myset"); set.add("some-value"); 22 Monday, July 1, 13
23. Module System 23 Monday, July 1, 13
24. Writing Verticles import org.vertx.java.core.Handler; import org.vertx.java.core.net.NetSocket; import org.vertx.java.core.streams.Pump; import org.vertx.java.platform.Verticle; public class Server extends Verticle { public void start() { vertx.createNetServer().connectHandler(new Handler<NetSocket>() { public void handle(final NetSocket socket) { Pump.createPump(socket, socket).start(); } }).listen(1234); } } vertx run Server.java 24 Monday, July 1, 13
25. Deploying Verticles programmatically // For example - deploy some other verticle container.deployVerticle("foo.js", new AsyncResultHandler<String>() { public void handle(AsyncResult<String> deployResult) { if (deployResult.succeeded()) { System.out.println(“Yay!”); } else { System.out.println(“Error: “ + deployResult.cause()); } } }); 25 Monday, July 1, 13
26. Modules • Package verticles into re-usable modules • Simply a zip file containing module definition, code, and resources • Very similar to the module system in Node.js • Modules can be “zip” artifacts released in Maven Central • Vert.x web site maintains a listing of Vert.x modules 26 Monday, July 1, 13
27. Example Modules • JDBC, Redis, MongoDB Persistors • AMQP • Mailer • Persistent work queue • Authentication Manager • Session Manager • Web framework • Language implementations 27 Monday, July 1, 13
28. Programming Experience 28 Monday, July 1, 13
29. Core APIs • TCP/SSL servers and clients • HTTP/HTTPS servers and clients • WebSockets servers and clients • SockJS • EventBus • Shared Maps and Sets • Buffers • Flow control • Timers • Files • Configuration 29 Monday, July 1, 13
30. Container API • Deploying and undeploying verticles • Deploying and undeploying modules • Logging • Retrieve verticle configuration 30 Monday, July 1, 13
31. Easy development • Gradle template • Maven archetype and plugin • IDE debugging and testing 31 Monday, July 1, 13
32. What is it good for? 32 Monday, July 1, 13
33. Applications • Realtime analytics dashboard • Big data queries and task coordination • Polyglot integration 33 Monday, July 1, 13
34. Some Pain Points 34 Monday, July 1, 13
35. Real life caveats • Content assist in IDEs don’t work for busmod APIs • You often find yourself tracing errors in the busmods, which can be difficult because the stack trace stops at message passing • People writing in other languages often get frustrated by not being able to use native extensions that they are already used to. • Hell of anonymous inner class callbacks and no good Java flow control libraries • Java7 only. Doesn’t work on Android. 35 Monday, July 1, 13
36. Conclusion 36 Monday, July 1, 13
37. 37 Monday, July 1, 13
38. “Using a bleeding-edge framework is exciting at first. Not so much afterwards.” David Wu 37 Monday, July 1, 13
39. Make it better. Contribute. http://vert-x.github.io/ 38 Monday, July 1, 13
40. Thank you 39 Monday, July 1, 13
41. Q & A 40 Monday, July 1, 13