6 ms·

Cowboy 2.0 released

275 points by tiffanyh 9y ago

Cieplak 9y ago
If you're interested in working with cowboy, we use it extensively at Finix, directly from Erlang as well as through Phoenix from Elixir. My email is cGF0cmljaytobkBmaW5peHBheW1lbnRzLmNvbQ==
- aanari 9y ago
  Awesome Cieplak, best of luck to you and the team @ Finix!
  - Cieplak 9y ago
    Thanks Ali! Miss working with you dude
- banachtarski 9y ago
  wow encoded email. such amaze. very impress
  - Cieplak 9y ago
    Sorry. Not trying to impress anyone. Just a simple filter. I love working with Erlang and want to meet other people who do too. Recruiters usually don't immediately recognize which base it is :)
matt4077 9y ago
If anybody else is getting lost in the woods, hunting for change logs, this is the best I found: https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from_1.0/ https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from...
- ryanswapp 9y ago
  Thanks! Was looking for that.
desireco42 9y ago
FYI :) since it is not obvious, this is Elixir server that is used for Phoenix among other things. So, big news. I didn't follow it much but it seems they support http/2 etc.
- dpeck 9y ago
  s/Elixir server/Erlang application/
- strmpnk 9y ago
  Small detail but it's an Erlang/OTP application which supports building HTTP, HTTP/2, and web socket services on top of Ranch (a TCP connection management library by the same author). Ranch makes it easy to manage TLS setup as well as connection pool tuning to fit your load profile, keeping latency reliable and low. Since it's built as an OTP application, it's pretty easy to drop this into any release, including something built using Elixir (commonly via Plug), LFE, Alpaca, and/or plain Erlang.
ewalk153 9y ago
I assume that this is the same cowboy server that provides the Heroku routing layer. Does this mean anything for our Heroku apps?
- strmpnk 9y ago
  As far as I've seen, it used to be a heavily modified version of cowboy v1 [1]. I'm not sure what they're using now. [1]: https://github.com/heroku/cowboyku https://github.com/heroku/cowboyku
  - tehno 9y ago
    HTTP headers still say "Server: Cowboy" and "Via: 1.1 vegur", so vegur+cowboyku+custom code.
- haimez 9y ago
  Don't worry, heroku can barely manage to deploy docker containers into their specialized stack (try it, it's fun and massively disappointing if you have a worker process). This won't affect your heroku apps because they'll basically never be able to upgrade their routing layer. Evidence: their routing layer is already horrendously broken and has been since 2012.
  - arthurcolle 9y ago
    Hhehe
noncoml 9y ago
Worth mentioning that Cowboy is pretty much a one man show: Loïc Hoguin
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  This always fills me with awe and dread at the same time (technically speaking the "awe" should cover the "dread" part but nobody uses it that way these days). I'm in awe at the achievement, and combination of vision, drive, knowledge, and skills that the maintainer must possess (or even more inspiring: has built up along the way). I dread the bus factor[0], or the more common weaker form of "maintainer is forced to move on from this project or just loses interest before someone else takes over and is worked in, and a lot of necessary tacit knowledge[1] is lost in the hand-over". EDIT: Actually, I'm one to talk, working as the sole programmer at a research group... Given the required optimizations for its niche my code gets pretty hairy. I should plan a few weeks of pure cleanup and extra commenting, and general documentation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge
sitkack 9y ago
Time to Erlang Again!
- BLanen 9y ago
  Or Elixir
  - hajile 9y ago
    I must be a rarity because I prefer the Erlang syntax over Elixir.
    - napsterbr 9y ago
      Macros are a big plus for elixir though
    - kureikain 9y ago
      I always feel I'm alone in this world. Erlang syntax is short and way easier to read compare to Elixir(due to its close to Ruby).
darklrd 9y ago
This is awesome! Can't wait to use websocket compression.
krapans 9y ago
Good news. So it means HTTP/2 support is incomming for https://github.com/elixir-plug/plug https://github.com/elixir-plug/plug :)
- davidkuhta 9y ago
  Yeah had the same thought, I was thinking "Cowboy, Cowboy, why does that sound familiar..." Then the purple Elixir related light-bulb kicked on.
willyk 9y ago
whohoo! thanks for all your hard work on this!
chaz6 9y ago
Are there any release notes? There does not seem to be any on the GitHub page.
Cowicide 9y ago
For those wondering what this is, I grabbed this from the zip file: = Cowboy Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP. == Goals Cowboy aims to provide a complete HTTP stack in a small code base. It is optimized for low latency and low memory usage, in part because it uses binary strings. Cowboy provides routing capabilities, selectively dispatching requests to handlers written in Erlang. Because it uses Ranch for managing connections, Cowboy can easily be embedded in any other application. Cowboy is clean and well tested Erlang code. == Online documentation * https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide[User https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide[User guide] * https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/manual[Function https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/manual[Function reference] == Offline documentation * While still online, run `make docs` * User guide available in `doc/` in PDF and HTML formats * Function reference man pages available in `doc/man3/` and `doc/man7/` * Run `make install-docs` to install man pages on your system * Full documentation in Asciidoc available in `doc/src/` * Examples available in `examples/` == Getting help * Official IRC Channel: #ninenines on irc.freenode.net * https://github.com/ninenines/cowboy/issues[Issues https://github.com/ninenines/cowboy/issues[Issues tracker] * https://ninenines.eu/services[Commercial https://ninenines.eu/services[Commercial Support]
- thinkMOAR 9y ago
  "Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP" It could really use this line on the linked page for people (me) that never heard of Cowboy in the first place. HTTP/2.0 gave me a clue, but plenty of client software that has HTTP/2.0 support too.
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    To be fair if you go to the main website it does give you that information, I feel like it would be redundant to put it on every single page.
nailer 9y ago
The announcement, including highlights: https://ninenines.eu/articles/cowboy-2.0.0/ https://ninenines.eu/articles/cowboy-2.0.0/ Full changes: https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from_1.0/ https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from... By the power of grayskull I invoke dang to update the link.
jamespo 9y ago
Can this be used to proxy requests from a downstream server, ie reverse cowboy?
atonse 9y ago
This is great news. Congrats to the Cowboy devs! Do a lot of people that run Phoenix apps in production expose cowboy directly to the public? I'm always putting them either behind nginx or Amazon ALB, both of which support http/2.
e12e 9y ago
After reading about tls 1.2 sessions[s], I wanted to see how easy/hard it would be to a) run tls 1.2 without session tickets, and/or force tls 1.3+ -- the closest I came was: [ed: moved the link up, for less confusing flow] http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_protocol.html#id61195 http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_protocol.html#id61195 which isn't all that enlightening to someone not familiar with Erlang. Does anyone know of a "best security practices" particularly for cowboy/opp/erlang and/or elixir? I'm reminded of how for the longest time ssl was completely broken in python (it wasn't at all obvious how to force verification of certificates - especially for new developers)... And I've grudgingly come to accept that tls/http2 is complex enough that beyond getting to "it works" - even foolproof libraries need a couple of lines of text discussing trade-offs (eg. security vs performance vs ease-of multi-server deployment of session resumption). [s] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358446
- strmpnk 9y ago
  I found this link handy: https://gist.github.com/ferd/af9abf6b3600d2d7f08dba58fdfb514a https://gist.github.com/ferd/af9abf6b3600d2d7f08dba58fdfb514... There's certainly a lot of room for improved documentation in this area. I'd even buy a book on this topic.

275 points by tiffanyh 9y ago

If you're interested in working with cowboy, we use it extensively at Finix, directly from Erlang as well as through Phoenix from Elixir. My email is cGF0cmljaytobkBmaW5peHBheW1lbnRzLmNvbQ==

aanari 9y ago
Awesome Cieplak, best of luck to you and the team @ Finix!
- Cieplak 9y ago
  Thanks Ali! Miss working with you dude
banachtarski 9y ago
wow encoded email. such amaze. very impress
- Cieplak 9y ago
  Sorry. Not trying to impress anyone. Just a simple filter. I love working with Erlang and want to meet other people who do too. Recruiters usually don't immediately recognize which base it is :)

matt4077 9y ago

If anybody else is getting lost in the woods, hunting for change logs, this is the best I found: https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from_1.0/ https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from...

ryanswapp 9y ago
Thanks! Was looking for that.

desireco42 9y ago

FYI :) since it is not obvious, this is Elixir server that is used for Phoenix among other things. So, big news. I didn't follow it much but it seems they support http/2 etc.

dpeck 9y ago
s/Elixir server/Erlang application/
strmpnk 9y ago
Small detail but it's an Erlang/OTP application which supports building HTTP, HTTP/2, and web socket services on top of Ranch (a TCP connection management library by the same author). Ranch makes it easy to manage TLS setup as well as connection pool tuning to fit your load profile, keeping latency reliable and low. Since it's built as an OTP application, it's pretty easy to drop this into any release, including something built using Elixir (commonly via Plug), LFE, Alpaca, and/or plain Erlang.

ewalk153 9y ago

I assume that this is the same cowboy server that provides the Heroku routing layer. Does this mean anything for our Heroku apps?

strmpnk 9y ago
As far as I've seen, it used to be a heavily modified version of cowboy v1 [1]. I'm not sure what they're using now. [1]: https://github.com/heroku/cowboyku https://github.com/heroku/cowboyku
- tehno 9y ago
  HTTP headers still say "Server: Cowboy" and "Via: 1.1 vegur", so vegur+cowboyku+custom code.
haimez 9y ago
Don't worry, heroku can barely manage to deploy docker containers into their specialized stack (try it, it's fun and massively disappointing if you have a worker process). This won't affect your heroku apps because they'll basically never be able to upgrade their routing layer. Evidence: their routing layer is already horrendously broken and has been since 2012.
- arthurcolle 9y ago
  Hhehe

noncoml 9y ago

Worth mentioning that Cowboy is pretty much a one man show: Loïc Hoguin

vanderZwan 9y ago
This always fills me with awe and dread at the same time (technically speaking the "awe" should cover the "dread" part but nobody uses it that way these days). I'm in awe at the achievement, and combination of vision, drive, knowledge, and skills that the maintainer must possess (or even more inspiring: has built up along the way). I dread the bus factor[0], or the more common weaker form of "maintainer is forced to move on from this project or just loses interest before someone else takes over and is worked in, and a lot of necessary tacit knowledge[1] is lost in the hand-over". EDIT: Actually, I'm one to talk, working as the sole programmer at a research group... Given the required optimizations for its niche my code gets pretty hairy. I should plan a few weeks of pure cleanup and extra commenting, and general documentation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

sitkack 9y ago

Time to Erlang Again!

BLanen 9y ago
Or Elixir
- hajile 9y ago
  I must be a rarity because I prefer the Erlang syntax over Elixir.
  - napsterbr 9y ago
    Macros are a big plus for elixir though
  - kureikain 9y ago
    I always feel I'm alone in this world. Erlang syntax is short and way easier to read compare to Elixir(due to its close to Ruby).

darklrd 9y ago

This is awesome! Can't wait to use websocket compression.

krapans 9y ago

Good news. So it means HTTP/2 support is incomming for https://github.com/elixir-plug/plug https://github.com/elixir-plug/plug :)

davidkuhta 9y ago
Yeah had the same thought, I was thinking "Cowboy, Cowboy, why does that sound familiar..." Then the purple Elixir related light-bulb kicked on.

willyk 9y ago

whohoo! thanks for all your hard work on this!

chaz6 9y ago

Are there any release notes? There does not seem to be any on the GitHub page.

Cowicide 9y ago

For those wondering what this is, I grabbed this from the zip file: = Cowboy Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP. == Goals Cowboy aims to provide a complete HTTP stack in a small code base. It is optimized for low latency and low memory usage, in part because it uses binary strings. Cowboy provides routing capabilities, selectively dispatching requests to handlers written in Erlang. Because it uses Ranch for managing connections, Cowboy can easily be embedded in any other application. Cowboy is clean and well tested Erlang code. == Online documentation * https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide[User https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide[User guide] * https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/manual[Function https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/manual[Function reference] == Offline documentation * While still online, run `make docs` * User guide available in `doc/` in PDF and HTML formats * Function reference man pages available in `doc/man3/` and `doc/man7/` * Run `make install-docs` to install man pages on your system * Full documentation in Asciidoc available in `doc/src/` * Examples available in `examples/` == Getting help * Official IRC Channel: #ninenines on irc.freenode.net * https://github.com/ninenines/cowboy/issues[Issues https://github.com/ninenines/cowboy/issues[Issues tracker] * https://ninenines.eu/services[Commercial https://ninenines.eu/services[Commercial Support]

thinkMOAR 9y ago
"Cowboy is a small, fast and modern HTTP server for Erlang/OTP" It could really use this line on the linked page for people (me) that never heard of Cowboy in the first place. HTTP/2.0 gave me a clue, but plenty of client software that has HTTP/2.0 support too.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  To be fair if you go to the main website it does give you that information, I feel like it would be redundant to put it on every single page.

nailer 9y ago

The announcement, including highlights: https://ninenines.eu/articles/cowboy-2.0.0/ https://ninenines.eu/articles/cowboy-2.0.0/ Full changes: https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from_1.0/ https://ninenines.eu/docs/en/cowboy/2.0/guide/migrating_from... By the power of grayskull I invoke dang to update the link.

jamespo 9y ago

Can this be used to proxy requests from a downstream server, ie reverse cowboy?

atonse 9y ago

This is great news. Congrats to the Cowboy devs! Do a lot of people that run Phoenix apps in production expose cowboy directly to the public? I'm always putting them either behind nginx or Amazon ALB, both of which support http/2.

e12e 9y ago

After reading about tls 1.2 sessions[s], I wanted to see how easy/hard it would be to a) run tls 1.2 without session tickets, and/or force tls 1.3+ -- the closest I came was: [ed: moved the link up, for less confusing flow] http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_protocol.html#id61195 http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_protocol.html#id61195 which isn't all that enlightening to someone not familiar with Erlang. Does anyone know of a "best security practices" particularly for cowboy/opp/erlang and/or elixir? I'm reminded of how for the longest time ssl was completely broken in python (it wasn't at all obvious how to force verification of certificates - especially for new developers)... And I've grudgingly come to accept that tls/http2 is complex enough that beyond getting to "it works" - even foolproof libraries need a couple of lines of text discussing trade-offs (eg. security vs performance vs ease-of multi-server deployment of session resumption). [s] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358446

strmpnk 9y ago
I found this link handy: https://gist.github.com/ferd/af9abf6b3600d2d7f08dba58fdfb514a https://gist.github.com/ferd/af9abf6b3600d2d7f08dba58fdfb514... There's certainly a lot of room for improved documentation in this area. I'd even buy a book on this topic.