Integration between Node.js and C++

Question

I have a Node.js application that I want to be able to send a JSON-object into a C++ application.

The C++ application will use the Poco-libraries (pocoproject.org).

I want the interaction to be lighting fast, so preferably no files or network-sockets. I have been looking into these areas:

• Pipes
• Shared memory
• unixSockets

What should I focus on, and can someone point my direction to docs. and samples?

Answer 1

First of all, some more data is needed to give good advice.

In general shared memory is the fastest, since there's no transfer required, but it's also the hardest to keep fine. I'm not sure you'd be able to do that with Node though.

If this program is just running for this one task and closing it might be worth just sending your JSON to the CPP program as a startup param

myCPPProgram.exe "JsonDataHere"

Answer 2

The simplest thing with decent performance should be a socket connection using Unix domain sockets with some low-overhead data frame format. E.g., two-byte length followed by UTF-8 encoded JSON. On the C++ side this should be easy to implement using the Poco::Net::TCPServer framework. Depending on where your application will go in the future you may run into limits of this format, but if it's basically just streaming JSON objects it should be fine.

To make it even simpler, you can use a WebSocket, which will take care of the framing for you, at the cost of the overhead for the initial connection setup (HTTP upgrade request). May even be possible to run the WebSocket protocol over a Unix domain socket.

However, the performance difference between a (localhost only) TCP socket and a Unix domain socket may not even be significant, given all the JavaScript/node.js overhead. Also, if performance is really a concern, JSON may not even be the right serialization format to begin with.

Anyway, without more detailed information (size of JSON data, message frequency) it's hard to give a definite recommendation.

Answer 3

I created a TCPServer, which seems to work. However if I close the server and start it again I get this error:

Net Exception: Address already in use: /tmp/app.SocketTest

Is it not possible to re-attach to the socket if it exists?

Here is the code for the TCPServer:

#include "Poco/Util/ServerApplication.h"
#include "Poco/Net/TCPServer.h"
#include "Poco/Net/TCPServerConnection.h"
#include "Poco/Net/TCPServerConnectionFactory.h"
#include "Poco/Util/Option.h"
#include "Poco/Util/OptionSet.h"
#include "Poco/Util/HelpFormatter.h"
#include "Poco/Net/StreamSocket.h"
#include "Poco/Net/ServerSocket.h"
#include "Poco/Net/SocketAddress.h"
#include "Poco/File.h"
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>

using Poco::Net::ServerSocket;
using Poco::Net::StreamSocket;
using Poco::Net::TCPServer;
using Poco::Net::TCPServerConnection;
using Poco::Net::TCPServerConnectionFactory;
using Poco::Net::SocketAddress;
using Poco::Util::ServerApplication;
using Poco::Util::Option;
using Poco::Util::OptionSet;
using Poco::Util::HelpFormatter;



class UnixSocketServerConnection: public TCPServerConnection
    /// This class handles all client connections.
{
public:
    UnixSocketServerConnection(const StreamSocket& s): 
        TCPServerConnection(s)
    {
    }

    void run()
    {
        try
        {
            /*char buffer[1024];
            int n = 1;
            while (n > 0)
            {
                n = socket().receiveBytes(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
                EchoBack(buffer);
            }*/

            std::string message;
            char buffer[1024];
            int n = 1;
            while (n > 0)
            {
                n = socket().receiveBytes(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
                buffer[n] = '\0';
                message += buffer;
                if(sizeof(buffer) > n && message != "")
                {
                    EchoBack(message);
                    message = "";
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Poco::Exception& exc)
        {
            std::cerr << "Error: " << exc.displayText() << std::endl;
        }
        std::cout << "Disconnected." << std::endl;
    }

private:
    inline void EchoBack(std::string message)
    {
        std::cout << "Message: " << message << std::endl;
        socket().sendBytes(message.data(), message.length());
    }
};

class UnixSocketServerConnectionFactory: public TCPServerConnectionFactory
    /// A factory
{
public:
    UnixSocketServerConnectionFactory()
    {
    }

    TCPServerConnection* createConnection(const StreamSocket& socket)
    {
        std::cout << "Got new connection." << std::endl;
        return new UnixSocketServerConnection(socket);
    }

private:

};

class UnixSocketServer: public Poco::Util::ServerApplication
    /// The main application class.
{
public:
    UnixSocketServer(): _helpRequested(false)
    {
    }

    ~UnixSocketServer()
    {
    }

protected:
    void initialize(Application& self)
    {
        loadConfiguration(); // load default configuration files, if present
        ServerApplication::initialize(self);
    }

    void uninitialize()
    {
        ServerApplication::uninitialize();
    }

    void defineOptions(OptionSet& options)
    {
        ServerApplication::defineOptions(options);

        options.addOption(
            Option("help", "h", "display help information on command line arguments")
                .required(false)
                .repeatable(false));
    }

    void handleOption(const std::string& name, const std::string& value)
    {
        ServerApplication::handleOption(name, value);

        if (name == "help")
            _helpRequested = true;
    }

    void displayHelp()
    {
        HelpFormatter helpFormatter(options());
        helpFormatter.setCommand(commandName());
        helpFormatter.setUsage("OPTIONS");
        helpFormatter.setHeader("A server application to test unix domain sockets.");
        helpFormatter.format(std::cout);
    }

    int main(const std::vector<std::string>& args)
    {
        if (_helpRequested)
        {
            displayHelp();
        }
        else
        {
            // set-up unix domain socket
            Poco::File socketFile("/tmp/app.SocketTest");
            SocketAddress unixSocket(SocketAddress::UNIX_LOCAL, socketFile.path());

            // set-up a server socket
            ServerSocket svs(unixSocket);
            // set-up a TCPServer instance
            TCPServer srv(new UnixSocketServerConnectionFactory, svs);
            // start the TCPServer
            srv.start();
            // wait for CTRL-C or kill
            waitForTerminationRequest();
            // Stop the TCPServer
            srv.stop();
        }
        return Application::EXIT_OK;
    }

private:
    bool _helpRequested;
};

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    UnixSocketServer app;
    return app.run(argc, argv);
}

Answer 4

The solution I have gone for, is to use unix domain sockets. The solution will run on a Raspbian-setup and the socket-file is placed in /dev/shm, which is mounted into RAM.

On the C++ side, I use the Poco::Net::TCPServer framework as described elsewhere in this post.

On the Node.js side, I use the node-ipc module (http://riaevangelist.github.io/node-ipc/).