Breaking news: mod_swift got turned into a small standalone project. And a much enhanced ApacheExpress is becoming its own - separate - project.

Our original mod_swift technology demo contained various things:

• mod_swift, the C module which adds the LoadSwiftModule directive
• Module maps etc to expose the Apache C API to Swift
• ExExpress
• ApacheExpress
• a set of examples

All setup as a ‘demo’ environment to showcase how Apache modules can be written in Swift, right within Xcode.

As it turns out, Swift is actually a great language to write Apache modules in! And ApacheExpress is a pretty neat framework on top. So in the last few months we worked on turning mod_swift from being just a neat technology demo into being a reliable hosting environment for Swift web applications.

During that, ApacheExpress functionality has also grown a lot and evolved into a rather powerful web application framework (stay tuned!). Hence we felt that we need to separate the two. On one side mod_swift being just an integration point between Swift and Apache that is framework independent. On the other side ApacheExpress as a higher level framework with an Express like API.

The new mod_swift

The new mod_swift is not setup as a fancy demo but as an infrastructure component. If you want a little like Phusion Passenger, but not really, because mod_swift is used to create fully native Apache modules instead of hosting foreign webapps within Apache.

While you can actually build Apache modules with just mod_swift, this has a very low level API and may be a little inconvenient. The expectation is that people are usually going to use a highler level API on top of that (ApacheExpress, or others).

So what does the new mod_swift provide:

• mod_swift.so, the C Apache module which adds the LoadSwiftModule directive
• Module maps, shims and a pkg-config to expose the Apache C API to Swift
• CApache, a Swift Package Manager module you can import to get access to the above (requires a mod_swift installation)
• Apache, optional, low-level Swift wrappers for CApache
• Swift Package Manager scripts that allow you to build and configure&run Swift Apache modules:
  • swift apache build: runs swift build and turns the results into an Apache module (mods_helloworld.so)
  • swift apache serve: automagically creates an Apache configuration for the module (including a dev-SSL setup and HTTP/2, if available)
• a Homebrew tap to quickly install it on macOS
• Documentation :-)

In short:

$ mkdir mods_helloworld && cd mods_helloworld
$ swift apache init
The Swift Apache build environment looks sound.

  module:    mods_helloworld
  config:    debug
  product:   /Users/helge/mods_helloworld/.build/mods_helloworld.so
  apxs:      /usr/local/bin/apxs
  mod_swift: /usr/local/opt/mod_swift

$ swift apache build
Cloning https://github.com/modswift/Apache.git
HEAD is now at 37f3038 Travis: use `swift build`
Resolved version: 0.2.0
Cloning https://github.com/modswift/CApache.git
HEAD is now at aa7d5b5 Tabs to spaces
Resolved version: 1.0.0
Compile Swift Module 'Apache' (8 sources)
Compile Swift Module 'mods_helloworld' (1 sources)

$ swift apache serve
Note: DocRoot /usr/local/var/www/htdocs
Starting Apache on port 8042/8442:
GET /helloworld/ 200 715 - 0ms

Note of interest: 0ms, the duration of the request. Yes, it is that fast ;-)

Installation

Head over to our new documentation website for all the details, but on macOS w/ Homebrew do this to get up&running:

brew tap modswift/mod_swift
brew install mod_swift

To check whether it worked:

$ swift apache validate
The Swift Apache build environment looks sound.

srcroot:   /Users/helge/dev/Swift/Apex3
module:    mods_Apex3
config:    debug
product:   /Users/helge/dev/Swift/Apex3/.build/mods_Apex3.so
apxs:      /usr/local/bin/apxs
mod_swift: /usr/local
swift:     3.1.0
cert:      self-signed-mod_swift-localhost-server.crt
http/2:    yes

The new ApacheExpress

We split off mod_swift because we think it is generally useful as a standalone component for various Swift server projects. Plugging into “The Number One HTTP Server On The Internet” just makes more sense than trying to replicate its rich and proven functionality.

However, we also have a neat, higher level, framework in the works: ApacheExpress. It is based on what was included in the mod_swift technology demo, but much enhanced and interfaces with our ZeeQL database access framework.
Work is still in progress to finish that up, stay tuned.

Summary

We think this is pretty cool stuff, but we love feedback. Join the mailing list, Slack channel or just drop us an email to tell us why this is crap (or not?): Slack.

P.S.: The original, self-contained, demo is still available in a branch: standalone-demo-2017-04-24.