←back to thread

Show HN: BinaryRPC – Lightweight WebSocket-based RPC framework in modern C++

(github.com)
76 points efecan0 | 2 comments | 12 Jul 25 16:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | source

Hi HN,

I’m a recent CS graduate. During the past few months I wrote BinaryRPC, an open-source RPC framework in modern C++20 focused on low-latency, binary WebSocket messaging.

Why I built it * Wanted first-class session support, pluggable QoS levels and a simple middleware chain (global, specific, multi handler) without extra JSON/XML parsing. * Easy developer experience

A quick feature list * Binary WebSocket frames – minimal overhead * Built-in session layer (login / reconnect / heartbeat) * QoS1 / QoS2 with automatic ACK & retry * Plugin system – rooms, msgpack, etc. can be added in one line * Thread-safe core: RAII + folly

Still early (solo project), so any feedback on design, concurrency model or missing must-have features would help a lot.

Thanks for reading!

also see "Chat Server in 5 Minutes with BinaryRPC": https://medium.com/@efecanerdem0907/building-a-chat-server-i...

1. jpc0 ◴[13 Jul 25 09:28 UTC] No.44548832[source]▶
> uwebsockets zlib boost folly glog gflags fmt double-conversion openssl usockets

Lightweight is a little bit of an exaggeration. What is the reason for using boost::thread over std::thread for this? I haven’t had time to dig through the code but most of the time I’ve found it was for compatibility with older compilers but you explicitly require C++20 support.

Regarding deps why not just standardise on vcpkg, it’s already a requirement for windows. That way you can use a manifest and ensure your dependencies are always the same version.

Better yet I would try to strip some of the more annoying to build libraries (cough folly) and replace them with more “standard” libraries that you can include using CPM and drop the requirement for vcpkg completely.

replies(1): >>44548961 #
2. efecan0 ◴[13 Jul 25 09:53 UTC] No.44548961[source]▶
Hi, author here (new-grad, v0.1.0 is literally the first public cut) – thanks a lot for the detailed dependency review!

So the real hard deps should end up as: `uWebSockets + usockets + OpenSSL + fmt` Everything else will be opt-in.

Road-map update (just added): 1. Merge `std::thread` rewrite (dev branch) 2. Remove folly/double-conversion, glog/gflags 3. Provide single-header client & minimal build script 4. Add `vcpkg.json` for Windows; Linux/macOS stay pure CMake/FetchContent

Your feedback is shaping v0.2.0 – please keep it coming! Feel free to open a Discussion or issue if you spot more low-hanging DX wins. Really appreciate the help