toy-rpc

An async RPC crate that mimics the golang's net/rpc package and supports both async-std and tokio.

This project is still being actively developed. I have kind of run out of ideas for features, so feel free to let me know if there is a feature that you want.

toy-rpc aims to be an easy-to-use async RPC tool that is inspired by golang's net/rpc's API. It supports both async_std and tokio runtimes over either TCP or TLS. Integration with common HTTP server frameworks such as actix_web, warp and tide are provided.

The overall usage and API should feel similar to that of the golang's net/rpc package. Some of the names are changed to make them sound more "rusty". Because rust does not come with runtime reflection, attribute macros #[export_impl] and #[export_trait] / #[export_trait_impl], and attribute #[export_method] are used to mark functions "exported" in golang's net/rpc perspective.

Some other features of toy-rpc:

• Cascading cancellation: whenever an unfinished Call<Res> is dropped, a cancellation will be sent to the server and thus propagating the cancellation.

More detailed usage can be found in the book and documentation.

• Book
• Quickstart
• Documentation
• Change Log
• GitHub repository
• crate.io
• Minimum supported Rust version: 1.53 or later

Some early documentation and examples for the preview releases can be found here

This crate uses #![forbid(unsafe_code)] to ensure no usage of unsafe in the crate.

Feature flags

The feature flags can be put into three categories.

Choice of runtime and HTTP framework integration

• async_std_runtime: supports usage with async-std
• tokio_runtime: supports usage with tokio
• http_tide: enables tide integration on the server side. This also enables async_std_runtime and ws_async_std
• http_actix_web: enables actix-web integration on the server side. This also enables tokio_runtime and ws_tokio
• http_warp: enables integration with warp on the server side. This also enables tokio_runtime and ws_tokio
• http_axum: enables integration with axum on the server side. This also enables tokio_runtime and ws_tokio

Choice of RPC server or client (both can be enabled at the same time)

• server: enables RPC server
• client: enables RPC client

Choice of serialization/deserialzation (only one should be enabled at a time)

• serde_bincode: (default) the default codec will use bincode for serialization/deserialization
• serde_json: the default codec will use serde_json for json serialization/deserialization
• serde_cbor: the default codec will use serde_cbor for serialization/deserialization
• serde_rmp: the default codec will use rmp-serde for serialization/deserialization

WebSocket support (HTTP integration is implementd with WebSocket)

• ws_tokio: enables WebSocket and HTTP integrations with tokio. This must be enabled for client to use dial_http(addr) or dial_websocket(addr).
• ws_async_std: enables WebSocket and HTTP integrations with async-std. This must be enabled for client to use dial_http(addr) or dial_websocket(addr).

TLS support

• tls: enables TLS support

Other trivial feature flags are listed below, and they are likely of no actual usage for you.

• docs
• std: serde/std. There is no actual usage right now.

By default, only serde_bincode feature is enabled. You must enable at least one runtime feature flag and the server and/or client to have something usable.

Default features

default = ["serde_bincode"]

Integration

HTTP integration is provided for actix-web, tide, and warp. More details can be found in the Book/Integrations and in examples.

Quickstart Example

A quickstart example with tokio runtime is provided in the Book/Quickstart.

License: MIT/Apache-2.0