REST with HTTP/2

HTTP has become one of the most successful and heavily used network protocols around the world. Version 1.0 was created in 1996 and received a minor update 3 years later. But it took more than a decade to create HTTP/2 (which was approved in 2015). Why did it take so long? Well, I wouldn’t tell you all the truth if I didn’t mention an experimental protocol, called SPDY. SPDY was primarily focused on improving performance. The initial results were very promising and inside Google’s lab, the developers measured 55% speed improvement. This work and experience was converted into HTTP/2 proposal back in 2012. A few years later, we can all use HTTP/2 (sometimes called h2) along with its older brother - HTTP/1.1.

Main differences between HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2

image

HTTP/1.1 is a text-based protocol. Sometimes this is very convenient, since you can use low level tools, such as Telnet, for hacking. But it doesn’t work very well for transporting large, binary payloads. HTTP/2 solves this problem by using a completely redesigned architecture. Each HTTP message (a request or a response) consists of one or more frames. A frame is the smallest portion of data travelling through a TCP connection. A set of messages is aggregated into a, so called stream.

image

HTTP/2 allows to lower the number of physical connections between the server and the client by multiplexing logical connections into one TCP connection. Streams allow the server to recognize, which frame belongs to which conversation.

How to connect using HTTP/2?

There are two ways for starting an HTTP/2 conversation.

The first one, and the most commonly used one, is TLS/ALPN. During TLS handshake the server and the client negotiate protocol for further communication. Unfortunately JDK below 9 doesn’t support it by default (there are a couple of workarounds but please refer to your favorite HTTP client’s manual to find some suggestions).

The second one, much less popular, is so called plain text upgrade. During HTTP/1.1 conversation, the client issues an HTTP/1.1 Upgrade header and proposes new conversation protocol. If the server agrees, they start using it. If not, they stick with HTTP/1.1.

The good news is that Infinispan supports both those upgrade paths. Thanks to the ALPN Hack Engine (the credit goes to Stuart Douglas from the Wildfly Team), we support TLS/ALPN without any bootstrap classpath modification.

Configuring Infinispan server for HTTP/2

Infinispan’s REST server already supports plain text upgrades out of the box. TLS/ALPN however, requires additional configuration since the server needs to use a Keystore. In order to make it even more convenient, we support generating keystores automatically when needed. Here’s an example showing how to configure a security realm:

The next step is to bind the security realm to a REST endpoint:

You may also use one of our configuration examples. The easiest way to get it working is to use our Docker image:

Let’s explain a couple of things from the command above:

  • -e "APP_USER=test" - This is a user name we will be used for REST authentication.

  • -e "APP_PASS=test" - Corresponding password.

  • ../../docs/examples/configs/standalone-rest-ssl.xml - Here is a ready-to-go configuration with REST and TLS/ALPN support

Unfortunately, HTTP/2 functionality has been broken in 9.2.0.Final. But we promise to fix it as soon as we can :) Please use 9.1.5.Final in the meantime.

Testing using CURL

Curl is one of my favorite tools. It’s very simple, powerful, and… it supports HTTP/2. Assuming that you already started Infinispan server using docker run command, you can put something into the cache:

Once, it’s there, let’s try to get it back:

Let’s analyze CURL switches one by one:

  • -k - Ignores certificate validation. All automatically generated certificates and self-signed and not trusted by default.

  • -v - Debug logging.

  • -u test:test - Username and password for authentication.

  • -d test - This is the payload when invoking HTTP POST.

  • -H “Accept: text/plain” - This tells the server what type of data we’d like to get in return.

Conclusions and links

I hope you enjoyed this small tutorial about HTTP/2. I highly encourage you to have a look at the links below to learn some more things about this topic. You may also measure the performance of your app when using HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. You will be surprised!

News

Tags

JUGs alpha as7 asymmetric clusters asynchronous beta c++ cdi chat clustering community conference configuration console data grids data-as-a-service database devoxx distributed executors docker event functional grouping and aggregation hotrod infinispan java 8 jboss cache jcache jclouds jcp jdg jpa judcon kubernetes listeners meetup minor release off-heap openshift performance presentations product protostream radargun radegast recruit release release 8.2 9.0 final release candidate remote query replication queue rest query security spring streams transactions vert.x workshop 8.1.0 API DSL Hibernate-Search Ickle Infinispan Query JP-QL JSON JUGs JavaOne LGPL License NoSQL Open Source Protobuf SCM administration affinity algorithms alpha amazon anchored keys annotations announcement archetype archetypes as5 as7 asl2 asynchronous atomic maps atomic objects availability aws beer benchmark benchmarks berkeleydb beta beta release blogger book breizh camp buddy replication bugfix c# c++ c3p0 cache benchmark framework cache store cache stores cachestore cassandra cdi cep certification cli cloud storage clustered cache configuration clustered counters clustered locks codemotion codename colocation command line interface community comparison compose concurrency conference conferences configuration console counter cpp-client cpu creative cross site replication csharp custom commands daas data container data entry data grids data structures data-as-a-service deadlock detection demo deployment dev-preview development devnation devoxx distributed executors distributed queries distribution docker documentation domain mode dotnet-client dzone refcard ec2 ehcache embedded embedded query equivalence event eviction example externalizers failover faq final fine grained flags flink full-text functional future garbage collection geecon getAll gigaspaces git github gke google graalvm greach conf gsoc hackergarten hadoop hbase health hibernate hibernate ogm hibernate search hot rod hotrod hql http/2 ide index indexing india infinispan infinispan 8 infoq internationalization interoperability interview introduction iteration javascript jboss as 5 jboss asylum jboss cache jbossworld jbug jcache jclouds jcp jdbc jdg jgroups jopr jpa js-client jsr 107 jsr 347 jta judcon kafka kubernetes lambda language learning leveldb license listeners loader local mode lock striping locking logging lucene mac management map reduce marshalling maven memcached memory migration minikube minishift minor release modules mongodb monitoring multi-tenancy nashorn native near caching netty node.js nodejs non-blocking nosqlunit off-heap openshift operator oracle osgi overhead paas paid support partition handling partitioning performance persistence podcast presentation presentations protostream public speaking push api putAll python quarkus query quick start radargun radegast react reactive red hat redis rehashing releaase release release candidate remote remote events remote query replication rest rest query roadmap rocksdb ruby s3 scattered cache scripting second level cache provider security segmented server shell site snowcamp spark split brain spring spring boot spring-session stable standards state transfer statistics storage store store by reference store by value streams substratevm synchronization syntax highlighting tdc testing tomcat transactions tutorial uneven load user groups user guide vagrant versioning vert.x video videos virtual nodes vote voxxed voxxed days milano wallpaper websocket websockets wildfly workshop xsd xsite yarn zulip
Posted by Sebastian Łaskawiec on 2018-03-07
Tags: docker server http/2 rest
back to top