warmcat/libwebsockets
Libwebsockets
libwebsockets is an event-driven networking framework written in C. It provides a suite of tools for implementing HTTP servers and clients, WebSocket bidirectional communication, MQTT client messaging, and TLS-enabled socket encryption.
The project distinguishes itself through a non-blocking event-loop architecture capable of scaling to high connection volumes by distributing network sessions across multiple service threads. It uses a protocol-based callback system and a pluggable event loop integration that allows the networking core to synchronize with external system event libraries.
The framework covers a broad range of communication capabilities, including transport-layer encryption for secure network traffic and connection proxying to enable offline devices to communicate via remote proxies. It also includes an abstract connection policy that decouples application logic from network endpoints via configuration files.
Features
- Bidirectional WebSocket Streaming - Enables real-time bidirectional communication channels for instant data exchange without request overhead.
- Event-Driven Networking - Implements a high-performance runtime model for handling thousands of concurrent connections using non-blocking I/O.
- MQTT Clients - Implements the MQTT protocol to allow devices to publish and subscribe to messages via a broker.
- High-Concurrency Networking - Manages massive numbers of simultaneous network connections through highly scalable asynchronous I/O.
- Client Implementations - Provides a comprehensive toolkit for both hosting web services and making outgoing HTTP requests.
- HTTP Implementations - Implements low-level HTTP protocol handling for managing incoming requests and outgoing responses.
- Network Protocol Implementations - Provides libraries for establishing and managing various network communication protocols and transport layers.
- Multi-Threaded Event Distribution - Distributes network event processing across multiple CPU cores to prevent single-core bottlenecks.
- Protocol Server Communications - Facilitates standardized exchange of requests and responses between clients and remote protocol servers.
- WebSocket Libraries - Implements a C library for bidirectional WebSocket streaming to enable instant data exchange.
- Secure Network Communication - Implements encrypted data transmission across web protocols using transport layer security.
- Pluggable SSL/TLS Integration Layers - Wraps raw socket streams with a pluggable SSL/TLS security layer for encrypted data transfer.
- SSL-Enabled Socket Wrappers - Provides socket wrappers that encrypt TCP and HTTP data transfers using SSL/TLS for secure communication.
- Transport Layer Encryption - Provides cryptographic layers that secure data in transit between network clients and servers using TLS.
- Non-Blocking Event Loops - Uses a non-blocking event loop architecture to handle thousands of concurrent connections efficiently.
- Service Hosting - Establishes lightweight server components to expose application functionality over standard web protocols.
- MQTT Broker Connections - Establishes TCP connections to MQTT brokers for publishing and subscribing to data topics.
- Event Loop Integrations - Allows the networking core to synchronize with external system event libraries via pluggable integration.
- MQTT Messaging Integrations - Supports the exchange of lightweight messages using a publish-subscribe pattern for low-bandwidth networks.
- Real-Time Data Streams - Maintains persistent connections to push live updates to clients via bidirectional data streams.
- Protocol Handler Callbacks - Routes network traffic to specific handler functions based on the protocol defined in configuration tables.
- Multi-Threaded Distribution - Distributes network sessions across multiple service threads to prevent CPU bottlenecks and scale to high connection volumes.
- Embedded Web Servers - Provides lightweight HTTP server components designed for integration into embedded application processes.
- Networking Libraries - Lightweight WebSocket implementation for client and server.
Star history
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