Ways to implement a JSON RESTful service in C/C++

Question

I am trying to do a JSON Restful web service in C/C++. I have tried Axis2/C and Staff, which work great for XML serialization/deserialization but not for JSON.

Nice question but take my advice: If you can do this web service in Java (or other framework-friendly oriented towards web service) - do it. Messing with low level stuff which C++ offers is great for learning, but it'll slow you down in most cases. — Poni, Mar 20 '12 at 17:36
Poni has a point. Even if you "roll your own" Java service, (using, say, Jetty and Gson) you can get something simple in a few hours, I've found. There may be frameworks out there that do all of the servlet stuff for you, but nothing immediately comes to mind. — Tom, Mar 22 '12 at 17:51
@poni and Tom. What about speed, what if I wanted to write a json framework and wanted it to be bloody fast ? Wouldn't c\c++ be a good idea ? — gideon, Nov 17 '14 at 23:44
@gideon yes if you can write it optimally and have lots of requests. otherwise you won't find any significant difference. — Sujay Phadke, Feb 25 '16 at 21:02

score 16 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 30 '12 at 08:06

16

You might want to take a look at Casablanca introduced in Herb Sutter's blog.

answered Oct 30 '12 at 08:06

Philipp

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Can we use Casablanca in a production environment? – VansFannel Oct 25 '13 at 07:23
Codeplex is shutting down :( – wcochran Jun 16 '17 at 21:38

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 23 '19 at 15:01

9

there are a small number of libraries that support creating rest services with c, e.g. restinio:

#include <restinio/all.hpp>
int main()
{
    restinio::run(
        restinio::on_this_thread()
        .port(8080)
        .address("localhost")
        .request_handler([](auto req) {
            return req->create_response().set_body("Hello, World!").done();
        }));
    return 0;
}

edited Feb 23 '19 at 15:01

vlp

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answered Jan 12 '19 at 22:24

Shaaban Ebrahim

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score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 05 '18 at 03:40

6

try https://github.com/babelouest/ulfius great library to build C/C++ Restful APIs. can support all platforms: Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and others

answered Nov 05 '18 at 03:40

Rand0m

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 11 '18 at 10:21

3

For C++ web service, I am using the following stack:

ipkn/crow C++ micro web framework
nlohmann/json for json serialization/deserialization.

answered Jan 11 '18 at 10:21

georgeliatsos

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 22 '20 at 12:20

Take a look at Oat++

It has:

URL routing with URL-parameters mapping
Support for Swagger-UI endpoint annotations.
Object-Mapping with JSON support.

Example endpoint:

ENDPOINT("GET", "users/{name}", getUserByName, PATH(String, name)) {
  auto userDto = UserDto::createShared();
  userDto->name = name;
  return createDtoResponse(Status::CODE_200, userDto);
}

Curl:

$ curl http://localhost:8000/users/john
{"name":"john"}

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 24 '12 at 23:16

3

You could look at ffead-cpp. Apart from providing support for json and restfull web services it also includes more features. This framework may be too heavy weight for your situation though.

answered Mar 24 '12 at 23:16

Rutix

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Adam Gu · Answer 7 · 2021-05-31T01:39:04.177

2

You may want to take a look at webcc.

It's a lightweight C++ HTTP client and server library for embedding purpose based on Boost.Asio (1.66+).

It's quite promising and actively being developed.

It includes a lot of examples to demonstrate how to create a server and client.

edited May 31 '21 at 01:39

answered Jul 18 '18 at 01:57

Adam Gu

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score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Oct 30 '12 at 08:17

1

There is a JIRA project resolved the support of JSON in AXIS2/C .
I implemented in my project and I managed with the writer (Badgerfish convention) but still I am trying to manage with the reader.
It seems more complicated managing with the stack in the memory.

edited Oct 30 '12 at 08:17

Alessandro Minoccheri

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answered Oct 30 '12 at 07:58

Marija Radezova

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Really, it was not resolved. Resolution "Won't fix". That is because this patch: 1) for old Axis2/C-1.3, 2) very unstable and don't work at all, 3) For windows-only. – loentar Apr 05 '13 at 09:33

Dr. Alex RE · Answer 9 · 2016-02-27T17:43:06.573

JSON and JSONPath are supported for both C and C++ in gsoap with a new code generator and a new JSON API to get you started quickly.

Several JSON, JSON-RPC and REST examples are included. Memory management is automatic.

The code generator can be useful. Take for example the json.org menu.json snippet:

{ "menu": {
    "id": "file",
    "value": "File",
    "popup": {
      "menuitem": [
        {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"},
        {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"},
        {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"}
      ]
    }
  }
}

The gsoap command jsoncpp -M menu.json generates this code to populate a JSON value:

value x(ctx);
x["menu"]["id"] = "file";
x["menu"]["value"] = "File";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][0]["value"] = "New";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][0]["onclick"] = "CreateNewDoc()";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][1]["value"] = "Open";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][1]["onclick"] = "OpenDoc()";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][2]["value"] = "Close";
x["menu"]["popup"]["menuitem"][2]["onclick"] = "CloseDoc()";

Also reading parsed JSON values and JSONPath code can be generated by this tool.

EDIT

To clarify, the jsoncpp command-line code generator shows the API code to read and write JSON data by using a .json file as a template, which I found is useful to save time to write the API code to populate and extract JSON data. JSONPath query code can also be generated with this tool.