v1.0.0 RC1

v1.0.0 - RC1

Released on 13th June 2018

This is the first release candidate version of the library. The API and the implementation are considered stable.

Summary

Since the first beta-release many new requested features as well as stability and usability improvements have been introduces.

• The WebWire binary protocol has reached version 1.4 receiving many improvements to error reporting and bug-fixes.
• Modularity has been improved by moving responsibilities to separate implementable interfaces such as SessionManager, ServerImplementation, SessionKeyGenerator, SessionInfo, SessionInfoParser and client.Implementation.
• The session-key generator is now (optionally) replaceable. (#10)
• A new default file-based session manager has been introduced, which can be replaced by any custom session manager implementation at will. (#8)
• The server now shuts down gracefully waiting for active handlers to finish before terminating, gracefully rejecting incoming requests and dropping incoming signals. This means that signals are still guaranteed to arrive though not guaranteed to be processed while requests are guaranteed to either be processed or explicitly refused acknowledging the client. (#9)
• Client agents are now closed gracefully waiting for all ongoing operations to finish before termination.
• Sessions can now (optionally) have multiple simultaneous connections which is especially useful for browser-based applications running multiple application instances in separate tabs each requiring a separate client. The maximum number of simultaneous connections per session is configurable. (#4, #20)
• The client implementation has received major improvements and now (optionally) maintains the connection automatically reconnecting when the connection is lost. (#11, #12)
• Support for dep has been added. Nevertheless, webwire remains go get'able thanks to vendor-embedded dependencies, which are shipped with the library though stripped when dep is used. (#2, 216d118)
• Test coverage is now monitored by coveralls. (8582d04, 161be37, fd40a4e)
• Requests don't require a payload any longer. A request may now provide either only a name or only a payload or both (but not none of them). (#22, b498cca)

Changes

Server

• The payload type now implements an encoding conversion method to convert it to a UTF8 encoded string. (a05f330)
• The standard go error interface is now used for errors returned in the request hook. Returning a non-wwr.Error error type will now return an empty internal error to the client and log it on the server to prevent leaks of sensitive information. (dfdb7b3, #PR 6)
• The client implementation now provides a new SessionInfo method to read specific session info fields. (6541735)
• Multi-Connection sessions have been introduces which allows clients to create multiple connections within a single session. This is especially useful for browsers where a single app could be opened in multiple browser-tabs each requiring one connection. (144c6ad)
• The graceful shutdown feature has been introduces which prevents active handlers from being interrupted during server shutdown. (678f860)
• New session creation error types have been added: MaxSessConnsReachedErr, SessNotFoundErr, SessionsDisabledErr. (ac73199, 060c85b, 37e0a86)
• All signal and request handling related hooks have been moved to the new ServerImplementation interface, which must be implemented by the library user. (4020691)
• The generation of the session keys have been moved to the new SessionKeyGenerator interface, which, by default, is implemented by the default session key generator. (f292d1e)
• All session related hooks have been moved to the new SessionManager interface, which, by default, is implemented by the default file-based session manager. (c5e515b)
• The underlying socket implementation is now abstracted away using the Socket interface, which is currently implemented using gorilla/websocket. (2daff67)
• The client agent and message objects are now directly passed to the OnRequest and OnSignal hooks instead of passing them through the context. (393d513)
• log.Loggeris now used for logging instead of io.Writer to allow for better customization of logs. (af872e5)
• The server is now defined as a webwire.Server interface type including new methods such as: Run, ActiveSessionsNum, SessionConnectionsNum and CloseSession. A webwire server instance is now created using the new constructor function. (e1e9259)
• The SessionConnections method will now return a list of client agents instead of just the number of concurrent connections of a session. (8f789c0)
• Add a new client agent method Close for closing an ongoing
  connection on the server side. (e1e9259)
• The method ActiveSessions was renamed to ActiveSessionsNum. (e1e9259)
• Deferred client agent shutdown has been implemented. The client agent now keeps track of all currently processed tasks and closes only when it's idle. (d3b8313)
• Support for external HTTP(S) servers has been added. The server interface now implements the standard Go HTTP handler interface and provides a new headless WebWire server constructor. (8de01cc)
• Add a new LastLookup field to the session object denoting the last time a session was looked up to prevent active sessions from being garbage collected.
  Also update the SessionManager interface and introduce a new
  return type SessionLookupResult to ease use declaration of the
  OnSessionLookup hook, which must now return a SessNotFoundErr in case the session wasn't found by key. (cbd6017)
• A new protocol error message type has been introduced indicating
  protocol violations when parsing a message.
  The webwire server will now return a protocol error message if the determined message type requires a reply, otherwise it'll just drop the message. (2316b59)

Client

• client.Request and client.TimedRequest will now return a special ReqTimeoutErr error type on timeouts. (70edd63, 37e0a86)
• A new DisconnectedErr error type indicating connection loss has been introduced. (132698f)
• The client API now provides a new IsConnected method. (a6ee217)
• The client now maintains the connection and automatically reestablishes it when it's lost, unless explicitly instructed otherwise. During connection downtime outgoing requests are buffered and resent when the connection is reestablished, all calls that fire a request will block the calling goroutine until they either time out or succeed. (aad55e7, [a7b0974](a7b0974be49...

v1.0.0 - Beta 1

Release v1.0.0 - Beta 1

This release is the first official beta version of the library. The API is generally stable though minor changes to it may happen during the beta-phase.

• Since the last release major improvements to the protocol have been made, the WebWire protocol v1.1 is now completely binary.
• The API of the library has been improved to be more user-friendly and intuitive.
• The implementation of the sessions feature has been completed.
• The request and signal namespacing feature has been implemented.

Bug-Fixes

Several bugs as well as security and stability issues in the library and the test suite regarding thread safety, parser security and state synchronization reliability have been fixed since the last release.

• Automated tests of the library won't cause dead-locks in case of asynchronous misbehavior anymore.
• A stability issue of the synchronization of the session between the client and the server potentially causing desynchronization has been fixed.
• A security issue in the binary parser potentially causing a segmentation fault in case of malicious messages providing incorrect size flags has been fixed.
• Concurrent access to the client and the client agent won't cause data races anymore.
• A bug disabling automatic session synchronization in case of a manual session restoration has been fixed.
• A bug in the clients request registry causing a failed request to succeed after its failure has been fixed.
• The payload of a reply message is now optional and won't cause parser errors on the client.
• Session objects are now marked with the correct encoding (UTF8 instead of UTF16).

Documentation

General improvements to the documentation have been made. A visual representation of a subset of the new binary protocol has been added.

Examples

Existing examples have been updated to demonstrate the usage of the new API version.

Testing

Several automated tests have been added since the last release. Existing tests were updated to use the new API version and received major security updates.

v0.1.0 - Alpha 1

Release v0.1.0 - Alpha 1

This release is the first official alpha version of the library (original revision: 0e354c3). The API is yet unstable and may contain several bugs, though essential functionality has already been implemented.

Documentation

Significant code parts are fully documented.

Examples

This release contains 3 examples:

• Echo - a basic request-reply topology demonstration.
• PubSub - a basic publish-subscribe topology demonstration.
• Chatroom - an advanced demonstration of the capabilities of the library including req-rep, pub-sub, authentication and sessions.