On 21/01/2024 20:18, Ethan McCue wrote:
Hi all,
Elliot[1] and I have been digging into the HTTP(S) server
implementation provided by the jdk.httpserver module.
It hasn't taken long to notice that the provided implementation
is...lacking. Both in performance, as it places extremely low and
errors out on benchmarks [2][3], and in polish, as doing relatively
simple tasks like printing out the result of
HttpExchange#getRequestHeaders() does not actually include the headers
in the output.
But, the actual API isn't wretched. The overall design (with a Filter
chain and a mutable "out" object for responses) is reminiscent of
Servlets and there is an SPI hook to provide custom server
implementations. And unlike the jwebserver tool, which is built on
this, there isn't a "for education purposes only" sign anywhere and it
is part of an exported and supposedly supported module.
All that is to ask - does anyone on this mailing list have any
historical context on this? Why was it added to the JDK, what were the
goals of its implementation, are there any records of the decision
process behind its design?
Separately is there any appetite for improving the performance of the
built-in server implementation?
The history on this is the web services client (meaning JAX-WS), added
in Java 6. A HTTP server was required to support web services "callbacks".
As it turned out, having a basic HTTP server in the JDK is very useful
for writing tests and very useful at reducing the "getting startup"
effort to serve up a web page. The HTTP server was never meant to be
feature rich with performance on par with other HTTP servers. However,
it does have a service provider interface (SPI) so alternative
implementations can be used (there are at least 3 full featured HTTP
servers that implement the SPI).
More recently, JEP 408 [1] added a command line interface to make it
easy to get started. It also added to the API to make it easy to create
and customize. You've found that so you have some context on what the
HTTP server is intended for now.
The net-dev mailing list is the mailing list to use.
-Alan
[1] https://openjdk.org/jeps/408
