3 ms·

Hi! I'm the PM for Cloudflare Workers. Happy to answer any questions about our announcements, or Workers in general.

by rita3ko 7y ago

Spiritus 7y ago
Do you have plans to add support for more languages besides JavaScript and Rust down the line, e.g. Python?
- rita3ko 7y ago
  Not for the time being - to allow us to run code on the edge, and be able to support many customers, we used V8 (a JavaScript engine) since it built for multi-tenant-per-process secure sandboxing, fast start time, and low overhead (a lot of this is explained in the original blog post here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cloudflare-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cloudflare-workers/). We are working on improving our WebAssembly integration, and making it a first-class experience (and we launched multiple improvements with the CLI to allow you to more seamlessly develop in Rust, C and C++). Maybe one day Python WebAssembly will take off.
  - fniephaus 7y ago
    Have you had a look at GraalVM? Their native images [1] allow compilation of JVM-based languages into binaries with fast startup behavior and low memory footprint. [1] https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilation/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilatio...
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      GraalVM is really awesome, but it doesn't fit what we're trying to do here. One of the key bits of architecture is that we share the VM between all of the programs; this saves on a lot of overhead. Running multiple native images would still give a copy of each runtime for each thing. (Also, while native images may have low memory footprint themselves, that doesn't mean that the programs that use them have a low enough memory footprint; my understanding (which may be wrong!) is that the default heap size it sets is 80% of the memory of the machine you're compiling it on. You can of course tune that, but it's gonna be tough to squeeze in a memory-hungry application.)
seanlaff 7y ago
The v8 isolates tech is super cool. It seems the other major providers might not be leveraging it in their FaaS platforms- do you have a hypothesis of why?
- rita3ko 7y ago
  We're starting to see similar technologies emerge (like Fastly's Lucet). My hypotheses (please take them as that): 1. Many companies are already deeply embedded and invested in container based offerings. 2. As with every new technology, it takes some time for it to take off. Maybe others are hesitant and waiting to see how it plays out for Workers before investing (going pretty well so far :) ). 3. Possible the other providers are working on it, and haven't launched yet.
yeppie 7y ago
Do you have plans to provide a Workers KV interface that would allow us to search for keys, as well as view, modify and create new KV entries? Also, it's currently only possible to avoid leaking that multiple websites belong to the same entity by creating multiple Cloudflare accounts due to the nameservers. This means that if we want to use Cloudflare workers for our 5 unique nameservers, then we would have to do a lot of unnecessary duplication. So on a somewhat unrelated note, do you have any plans to add support for adding additional nameservers to a Cloudflare account (this is currently holding us back from using Workers over Lambda, and it's something we would gladly pay for).
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  I’m the PM on Workers KV. We do have plans for better tooling here, though I can’t promise exact details or a timeline. I can tell you that I feel the pain of the lack of that stuff, though.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Lol well generally speaking, when the PM feels the pain it gets done sooner rather than later
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      In some sense, that's true, but it's also my job to make the best thing for everyone, not the best thing for me personally :)
- judge2020 7y ago
  > additional nameservers to a Cloudflare account The price point may not be ideal but Business plan websites can set up branded subdomains (eg ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com). Also, there are a limited amount of nameservers (2550 possible combinations with 50 male and 51 female nameservers I believe), so there’s probably a few thousand other accounts with the same combination of nameservers as you. This can still be a problem though, if you use a less-common TLD and/or you use pages with similar content. You could try using the API to automate this across multiple accounts https://api.cloudflare.com https://api.cloudflare.com.
StavrosK 7y ago
I've pre-registered for two subdomains, clicked the email, logged in to my account but I can't add them because it says they're "taken" (by me, presumably). How can I add the subdomains I reserved?
- rita3ko 7y ago
  Are you using the email that you made the reservations with? We do the match on that. Otherwise, if you want to shoot me an email at rita at cloudflare dot com, with the subdomains / email you signed up with, I can look into it.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Emailed, thanks!
maltalex 7y ago
What compelling use cases have you seen for this technology?
- rita3ko 7y ago
  It's been really interesting watching the evolution of use cases for Workers. I would put them into three broader categories: 1. Additional functionality built on Workers: the interesting thing with Workers is that it can be a standalone function, or it can act as a proxy. That means that customers can easily add new functionality on top of existing APIs for example, without having to migrate the whole thing to Workers at once. One interesting example of that was an e-customer used Workers to add a barcode generator funcionality for one of their customers. 2. Applications built on cache: the way CDN usually works is that you build an application, and put a cache on top of it. That comes with all sorts of limitations around what you can and cannot cache. I think with a built in cache, we're going to start seeing more cases where the cache is written to from the beginning. This enables customers to do things like cache content for logged in, or paid users by doing the auth on the edge next to the cache, rather than at the origin. Or easily update only certain chunks of what's in the cache, and thus do all sorts of customization at the edge, without necessitating added latency. 3. Standalone serverless apps: there are a few very interesting examples here, one of which we'll be able to talk more openly about in a few days. I think SamKnows is a good one: they were able to build a download speedtest directly from Workers [1]. Another good one was building the reservations website for Workers.dev - we were able to get that service spun up very quickly, and have it scale infinitely to handle the influx of traffic [2]. Similarly, Cloudflare Access is built entirely on Workers (we are pretty excited about dogfooding!). A couple random cool ones: I've seen some experimentation with ML on the edge (very much POC, and very early, but everything starts somewhere). And DNA sequencing analysis, which really blew me away [4] [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-samknows-cloudflare-platform/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-samknows-cloudflare-platform... [2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/api-at-the-edge-workers-and-firestore/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/api-at-the-edge-workers-and-fire... [3] https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-serverless-apps-with-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-serverless-apps-with-wo... [4] https://twitter.com/RobAboukhalil/status/1121095204281430016 https://twitter.com/RobAboukhalil/status/1121095204281430016
lucasverra 7y ago
Hi there, thanks for sharing data this sunday. How is this better CDN for functions than netlify's and its dev/offline-simulating tooling ? Maybe prices (your free tier seems overly generous) ? but Assume my interest dont go < 10K req / day, it that would be the case i would monetising somehow
StavrosK 7y ago
I was excited to try out WASM workers (thanks again for your help in getting me set up!) but when I ran the Rust example, I realized it's only half-ready. The `request` object isn't passed into the Rust function, and there's basically no documentation about how things would work on the Rust side. I was hoping I could get a Rust template and not have to touch any JS, just change the Rust side of things. However, it looks like all the template provides is some instruction on how to call a function without arguments, which is not very useful. I know this might be out of scope of the template, but I think it kind of defeats the purpose of saying "We support WASM!" if it implies "but you're going to have to know JS and figure out how to actually use WASM". If I knew JS that well, I would have just used that.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  We’ll be doing more here, for sure. Start small, iterate from there :)
toinbis 7y ago
Thanks for release and making such inovation affordable for all of us. Just to clarify on the new "multi-script" feature and "30 scripts" limitation: - same worker scripts are shared between CF account level and workers.dev. - script belongs to account, not domain. - 30 scripts limit is for account (CF/workers.dev). - Routes for domain are unlimited. Are all of the above statements correct? Thanks!
tadeusz_wojcik 7y ago
I'm using workers since beta, including KV storage, it's great overall. Unfortunately recently noticed (testing for production launch) that there are rate limits in place (something around 2k requests per minute per IP for requests that go trough to origin server) - known issue it seems - https://community.cloudflare.com/t/rate-limit-on-workers/49548 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/rate-limit-on-workers/495... . I've contacted support already, ticket is marked as 'solved' but I still experience limits (429/1015 error codes). I'd love to know if it's something to be expected and if someone is planning to run tens or even hundred requests per seconds from single IP (I have bit weird API to work with that requires that) it's better to not use workers as it's not intended scenario? Or it's a matter of having more expensive Cloudflare plan (I'm on 5$/month for workers)? Would really appreciate more details on that subject as can't really change that API and will constantly run into 429 errors.
- zackbloom 7y ago
  There are various mechanisms like this in place to make Workers an unattractive way to launch an attack. tadeusz_wojcik also emailed us, and we were able to raise the limit for them (and anyone else who asks!).
  - tadeusz_wojcik 7y ago
    yep, I can confirm. Excellent communication on Zack's and Kenton's side. After limits were lifted everything is working perfectly - no more 429 errors. Thanks again!
toinbis 7y ago
With the release of wrangler and new docs we finally have the router app starter template. I wanted to ask if you could go one step further and share the template which would include middleware functionality implemented. By middleware I refer to what middleware stands in Django web framework. Many of the app functionality, such as language/locale based cookies, url-level a/b-tests, etc. is shared between all the routes, and it would be nice to have such logic described somewhere in separate place, not in the route handler functions. For non-pro developers like me that'd really help. P.S. In case no one has mentioned this yet, community is really thankful for allowing multi-script for everyone, not only enterprise users. Enterprise features for free or 5$ - that's a very generous pricing, to say the least! Thanks.
- kmf 7y ago
  Hey - developer advocate for Workers here. Thinking a lot about this right now, prototyping a few ideas too. If you have ideas, happy to chat: kristian@cloudflare

Hi! I'm the PM for Cloudflare Workers. Happy to answer any questions about our announcements, or Workers in general.

Spiritus 7y ago

Do you have plans to add support for more languages besides JavaScript and Rust down the line, e.g. Python?

rita3ko 7y ago
Not for the time being - to allow us to run code on the edge, and be able to support many customers, we used V8 (a JavaScript engine) since it built for multi-tenant-per-process secure sandboxing, fast start time, and low overhead (a lot of this is explained in the original blog post here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cloudflare-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cloudflare-workers/). We are working on improving our WebAssembly integration, and making it a first-class experience (and we launched multiple improvements with the CLI to allow you to more seamlessly develop in Rust, C and C++). Maybe one day Python WebAssembly will take off.
- fniephaus 7y ago
  Have you had a look at GraalVM? Their native images [1] allow compilation of JVM-based languages into binaries with fast startup behavior and low memory footprint. [1] https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilation/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/aot-compilatio...
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    GraalVM is really awesome, but it doesn't fit what we're trying to do here. One of the key bits of architecture is that we share the VM between all of the programs; this saves on a lot of overhead. Running multiple native images would still give a copy of each runtime for each thing. (Also, while native images may have low memory footprint themselves, that doesn't mean that the programs that use them have a low enough memory footprint; my understanding (which may be wrong!) is that the default heap size it sets is 80% of the memory of the machine you're compiling it on. You can of course tune that, but it's gonna be tough to squeeze in a memory-hungry application.)

seanlaff 7y ago

The v8 isolates tech is super cool. It seems the other major providers might not be leveraging it in their FaaS platforms- do you have a hypothesis of why?

rita3ko 7y ago
We're starting to see similar technologies emerge (like Fastly's Lucet). My hypotheses (please take them as that): 1. Many companies are already deeply embedded and invested in container based offerings. 2. As with every new technology, it takes some time for it to take off. Maybe others are hesitant and waiting to see how it plays out for Workers before investing (going pretty well so far :) ). 3. Possible the other providers are working on it, and haven't launched yet.

yeppie 7y ago

Do you have plans to provide a Workers KV interface that would allow us to search for keys, as well as view, modify and create new KV entries? Also, it's currently only possible to avoid leaking that multiple websites belong to the same entity by creating multiple Cloudflare accounts due to the nameservers. This means that if we want to use Cloudflare workers for our 5 unique nameservers, then we would have to do a lot of unnecessary duplication. So on a somewhat unrelated note, do you have any plans to add support for adding additional nameservers to a Cloudflare account (this is currently holding us back from using Workers over Lambda, and it's something we would gladly pay for).

steveklabnik 7y ago
I’m the PM on Workers KV. We do have plans for better tooling here, though I can’t promise exact details or a timeline. I can tell you that I feel the pain of the lack of that stuff, though.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Lol well generally speaking, when the PM feels the pain it gets done sooner rather than later
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    In some sense, that's true, but it's also my job to make the best thing for everyone, not the best thing for me personally :)
judge2020 7y ago
> additional nameservers to a Cloudflare account The price point may not be ideal but Business plan websites can set up branded subdomains (eg ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com). Also, there are a limited amount of nameservers (2550 possible combinations with 50 male and 51 female nameservers I believe), so there’s probably a few thousand other accounts with the same combination of nameservers as you. This can still be a problem though, if you use a less-common TLD and/or you use pages with similar content. You could try using the API to automate this across multiple accounts https://api.cloudflare.com https://api.cloudflare.com.

StavrosK 7y ago

I've pre-registered for two subdomains, clicked the email, logged in to my account but I can't add them because it says they're "taken" (by me, presumably). How can I add the subdomains I reserved?

rita3ko 7y ago
Are you using the email that you made the reservations with? We do the match on that. Otherwise, if you want to shoot me an email at rita at cloudflare dot com, with the subdomains / email you signed up with, I can look into it.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Emailed, thanks!

maltalex 7y ago

What compelling use cases have you seen for this technology?

rita3ko 7y ago
It's been really interesting watching the evolution of use cases for Workers. I would put them into three broader categories: 1. Additional functionality built on Workers: the interesting thing with Workers is that it can be a standalone function, or it can act as a proxy. That means that customers can easily add new functionality on top of existing APIs for example, without having to migrate the whole thing to Workers at once. One interesting example of that was an e-customer used Workers to add a barcode generator funcionality for one of their customers. 2. Applications built on cache: the way CDN usually works is that you build an application, and put a cache on top of it. That comes with all sorts of limitations around what you can and cannot cache. I think with a built in cache, we're going to start seeing more cases where the cache is written to from the beginning. This enables customers to do things like cache content for logged in, or paid users by doing the auth on the edge next to the cache, rather than at the origin. Or easily update only certain chunks of what's in the cache, and thus do all sorts of customization at the edge, without necessitating added latency. 3. Standalone serverless apps: there are a few very interesting examples here, one of which we'll be able to talk more openly about in a few days. I think SamKnows is a good one: they were able to build a download speedtest directly from Workers [1]. Another good one was building the reservations website for Workers.dev - we were able to get that service spun up very quickly, and have it scale infinitely to handle the influx of traffic [2]. Similarly, Cloudflare Access is built entirely on Workers (we are pretty excited about dogfooding!). A couple random cool ones: I've seen some experimentation with ML on the edge (very much POC, and very early, but everything starts somewhere). And DNA sequencing analysis, which really blew me away [4] [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-samknows-cloudflare-platform/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-samknows-cloudflare-platform... [2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/api-at-the-edge-workers-and-firestore/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/api-at-the-edge-workers-and-fire... [3] https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-serverless-apps-with-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-serverless-apps-with-wo... [4] https://twitter.com/RobAboukhalil/status/1121095204281430016 https://twitter.com/RobAboukhalil/status/1121095204281430016

lucasverra 7y ago

Hi there, thanks for sharing data this sunday. How is this better CDN for functions than netlify's and its dev/offline-simulating tooling ? Maybe prices (your free tier seems overly generous) ? but Assume my interest dont go < 10K req / day, it that would be the case i would monetising somehow

StavrosK 7y ago

I was excited to try out WASM workers (thanks again for your help in getting me set up!) but when I ran the Rust example, I realized it's only half-ready. The `request` object isn't passed into the Rust function, and there's basically no documentation about how things would work on the Rust side. I was hoping I could get a Rust template and not have to touch any JS, just change the Rust side of things. However, it looks like all the template provides is some instruction on how to call a function without arguments, which is not very useful. I know this might be out of scope of the template, but I think it kind of defeats the purpose of saying "We support WASM!" if it implies "but you're going to have to know JS and figure out how to actually use WASM". If I knew JS that well, I would have just used that.

steveklabnik 7y ago
We’ll be doing more here, for sure. Start small, iterate from there :)

toinbis 7y ago

Thanks for release and making such inovation affordable for all of us. Just to clarify on the new "multi-script" feature and "30 scripts" limitation: - same worker scripts are shared between CF account level and workers.dev. - script belongs to account, not domain. - 30 scripts limit is for account (CF/workers.dev). - Routes for domain are unlimited. Are all of the above statements correct? Thanks!

tadeusz_wojcik 7y ago

I'm using workers since beta, including KV storage, it's great overall. Unfortunately recently noticed (testing for production launch) that there are rate limits in place (something around 2k requests per minute per IP for requests that go trough to origin server) - known issue it seems - https://community.cloudflare.com/t/rate-limit-on-workers/49548 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/rate-limit-on-workers/495... . I've contacted support already, ticket is marked as 'solved' but I still experience limits (429/1015 error codes). I'd love to know if it's something to be expected and if someone is planning to run tens or even hundred requests per seconds from single IP (I have bit weird API to work with that requires that) it's better to not use workers as it's not intended scenario? Or it's a matter of having more expensive Cloudflare plan (I'm on 5$/month for workers)? Would really appreciate more details on that subject as can't really change that API and will constantly run into 429 errors.

zackbloom 7y ago
There are various mechanisms like this in place to make Workers an unattractive way to launch an attack. tadeusz_wojcik also emailed us, and we were able to raise the limit for them (and anyone else who asks!).
- tadeusz_wojcik 7y ago
  yep, I can confirm. Excellent communication on Zack's and Kenton's side. After limits were lifted everything is working perfectly - no more 429 errors. Thanks again!

toinbis 7y ago

With the release of wrangler and new docs we finally have the router app starter template. I wanted to ask if you could go one step further and share the template which would include middleware functionality implemented. By middleware I refer to what middleware stands in Django web framework. Many of the app functionality, such as language/locale based cookies, url-level a/b-tests, etc. is shared between all the routes, and it would be nice to have such logic described somewhere in separate place, not in the route handler functions. For non-pro developers like me that'd really help. P.S. In case no one has mentioned this yet, community is really thankful for allowing multi-script for everyone, not only enterprise users. Enterprise features for free or 5$ - that's a very generous pricing, to say the least! Thanks.

kmf 7y ago
Hey - developer advocate for Workers here. Thinking a lot about this right now, prototyping a few ideas too. If you have ideas, happy to chat: kristian@cloudflare