ninenines/cowboy
Cowboy
Cowboy is a high-performance HTTP server for Erlang and OTP. It is designed to handle web traffic with low memory usage and can be used as a standalone server or as an embedded networking library integrated directly into an existing application.
The project implements modern transport protocols, including HTTP/3, QUIC, and WebTransport, to enable faster connections and bidirectional data streaming. It also functions as a real-time communication server supporting Server-Sent Events for pushing asynchronous updates to clients.
Broad capabilities include path and content-type based request routing, static asset hosting with directory listings, and multipart file upload handling. The server provides security and traffic management through SSL/TLS encryption, basic authentication, cookie management, response body compression, and chunked transfer encoding.
Features
- Web Servers - Provides a high-performance HTTP server specifically designed for the Erlang and OTP ecosystem.
- Full-Duplex HTTP Communication - Supports simultaneous bidirectional data exchange over HTTP for real-time communication.
- HTTP/3 Implementations - Implements HTTP/3 and QUIC to enable faster connections and bidirectional data streaming.
- QUIC Implementations - Provides a full implementation of the QUIC transport protocol to support HTTP/3 and reduce connection latency.
- Real-time Communication Servers - Provides a high-performance server designed for live messaging and bidirectional data streams.
- Embedded Network Stacks - Integrates HTTP server capabilities directly into Erlang applications to avoid managing separate processes.
- HTTP Request Handling - Processes incoming web traffic using a low-latency, memory-efficient HTTP stack.
- Embedded Web Servers - Can be integrated directly into an existing application process as an embedded networking library.
- High-Performance HTTP Servers - Provides a high-performance HTTP server optimized for low memory usage and high throughput.
- Request Routing - Implements request routing by matching paths and HTTP methods against defined rules.
- Route Handlers - Provides a mechanism for mapping incoming HTTP requests to specific backend handler functions.
- Real-Time Data Streams - Supports real-time data streaming via Server-Sent Events and persistent network connections.
- Server-Sent Events - Implements the Server-Sent Events protocol to push asynchronous real-time updates to clients.
- Socket Networking - Manages low-level network connections using the Erlang OTP socket interface for high-concurrency handling.
- SSL/TLS Connection Security - Encrypts traffic between the client and server using SSL/TLS to ensure data privacy and integrity.
- Process Models - Employs a process-per-connection model using lightweight Erlang processes to ensure request isolation and fault tolerance.
- Content-Type Based Routing - Hono returns different data formats such as HTML or JSON by inspecting request headers to meet specific client requirements.
- Static File Servers - Ships a built-in system for hosting static assets and generating directory listings over HTTP.
- Web API Frameworks - Enables web API development with path and method-based routing for JSON and HTML responses.
- Static Asset Serving - Delivers static files from the local filesystem and generates directory listings for client browsing.
- API Frameworks - Small, fast HTTP server for Erlang.
- Language Toolkits - Small, fast HTTP server for Erlang.
- Web Frameworks - High-performance, small, and modular HTTP server.
