Async Lightweight HTTP Client (aka ALHC)

WARNING

This library is still in development and VERY UNSTABLE, please don't use it in production environment.

What if we need async but also lightweight http client without using such a large library like reqwest, isahc or surf?

ALHC is a async http client library that using System library to reduce binary size and provide async request feature.

HTTPS Example:

use alhc::prelude::*;
use alhc::*;

use pollster::FutureExt;

fn main() -> DynResult {
    let client = get_client_builder().build().unwrap();

    let r = client
        .post("https://httpbin.org/anything")?
        .header("user-agent", "alhc/0.2.0")
        .body_string("Hello World!".repeat(20))
        .block_on()?
        .recv_string()
        .block_on()?;

    println!("{r}");

    Ok(())
}

Our little request example https with release build can be 182 KB, which is smaller than tinyget's http example. If we use rustc nightly feature plus build-std and panic_immediate_abort, it'll be incredibly 65 KB!

Currently work in progress and support Windows (Using WinHTTP) and unix-like system (including macOS) (Using System libcurl by wraping isahc crate (Will be replaced by simplier curl crate binding)).

Platform Status

Name	Status	Note
Windows	Working	Maybe unstable (To be optimized)
macOS	Working	Simple wrapper of isahc crate
Linux	Working	Simple wrapper of isahc crate

Features

• async_t_boxed: Use async-trait instead of async-t, which requires 1.75+ version of rustc but with zero-cost. Default is disabled.
• serde: Can give you the ability of send/receive json data without manually call serde_json. Default is disabled.
• anyhow: Use Result type from anyhow crate instead Result<T, Box<dyn std::error::Error>>. Default is disabled.

Minimum binary size on unix-like platform guideline

For Unix-like system like linux or macOS which have builtin libcurl on almost all desktop version, you have to install all the development packages that curl crate needs to dynamic link these libraries. For an example, on Ubuntu, you need to install libcurl4-openssl-dev and zlib1g-dev for a dynamic linkage. Else curl crate will build from source and static link them and heavily impact binary size.

Compilation binary size comparison

Note: the size optimization argument is: cargo +nightly run --release -Z build-std=core,alloc,std,panic_abort -Z build-std-features=panic_immediate_abort --target [TARGET] --example [EXAMPLE] and some configuration in Cargo.toml

Name	Windows (x86_64)	Windows (i686)	Windows (aarch64)	macOS (x86_64)	macOS (aarch64)	Linux (x86_64)
example https	468,992	402,944	296,960	4,078,936	4,395,400	18,051,064
example https release	181,248	162,816	200,192	729,304	719,192	850,704
example https release with size optimization	75,264	66,048	59,392	444,680	453,064	465,480
example parallel	571,904	486,912	393,216	4,250,296	4,572,120	19,612,824
example parallel release	190,464	170,496	229,888	737,536	735,752	862,992
example parallel release with size optimization	80,896	71,680	66,560	452,912	453,112	469,576
example sequential	472,064	405,504	302,080	4,069,368	4,373,352	18,048,624
example sequential release	182,784	164,864	203,264	729,296	719,176	850,704
example sequential release with size optimization	76,800	68,096	60,928	448,776	453,064	465,480