Crate alhc

Async Lightweight HTTP Client (aka ALHC)

WARNING This library is still in development and VERY UNSTABLE, please don’t use it in production environment.

What if we need async but also lightweight http client without using such a large library like reqwest, isahc or surf?

ALHC is a async http client library that using System library to reduce binary size and provide async request feature.

HTTPS Example:

use alhc::prelude::*;
use alhc::*;

use pollster::FutureExt;

fn main() -> DynResult {
    let client = get_client_builder().build().unwrap();

    let r = client
        .post("https://httpbin.org/anything")?
        .header("user-agent", "alhc/0.2.0")
        .body_string("Hello World!".repeat(20))
        .block_on()?
        .recv_string()
        .block_on()?;

    println!("{r}");

    Ok(())
}

Our little request example https with release build can be 182 KB, which is smaller than tinyget’s http example. If we use rustc nightly feature plus build-std and panic_immediate_abort, it’ll be incredibly 60 KB!

Currently work in progress and only support Windows (Using WinHTTP) and macOS in progress (Using CFNetwork), linux are being planned.

Platform Status

Name	Status	Note
Windows	Working
MacOS	Working	Will block the thread currently (To be fixed)
Linux	Under Development

Features

• async_t_boxed: Use async-trait instead of async-t, which requires nightly rustc but with zero-cost. Default is enabled.
• serde: Can give you the ability of send/receive json data without manually call serde_json. Default is disabled.

Compilation binary size comparison

Note: the size optimization argument is: cargo +nightly run --release -Z build-std=core,alloc,std,panic_abort -Z build-std-features=panic_immediate_abort --target [TARGET] --example [EXAMPLE] and some configuration in Cargo.toml

Name	Windows (x86_64)	Windows (i686)	Windows (aarch64)	macOS (x86_64)	macOS (aarch64)	Linux (x86_64)
example https	397,824	284,160	296,960	950,512	992,152	WIP
example https release	181,760	187,904	200,192	336,848	323,048	/
example https release with size optimization	60,416	52,224	59,392	89,056	89,944	/
example parallel	520,704	376,320	393,216	1,130,448	1,192,536	/
example parallel release	195,072	211,456	229,888	353,216	339,576	/
example parallel release with size optimization	66,560	58,880	66,560	105,440	106,456	/
example sequential	402,432	289,280	302,080	952,720	994,920	/
example sequential release	185,344	191,488	203,264	336,792	323,000	/
example sequential release with size optimization	62,464	54,784	60,928	89,016	89,896	/

Modules

• prelude

Structs

• ResponseBody

Enums

• Method

Functions

• get_client_builder

Type Aliases

• DynResult