[Xapian-discuss] Node.js binding

[Dan Colish]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Liam <xapian at networkimprov.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Liam <xapian at networkimprov.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 8:07 AM, Dan Colish <dcolish at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 4:15 AM, Richard Boulton <richard at tartarus.org
> >> >wrote:
> >>
> >> > On 14 October 2011 10:50, Liam <xapian at networkimprov.net> wrote:
> >> > > Wondering if anyone's considered/planning a Node.js binding? (I can
> >> > > contribute to the effort; I have modest experience with the V8 api;
> >> > though
> >> > > haven't started with xapian yet.)
> >> >
> >> > I took a look at making one a while ago (when Node was pretty new) -
> >> > actually making an extension which calls some Xapian functions from
> >> > node is pretty easy to do by hand (though wrapping the full API would
> >> > be harder - and I don't think SWIG has any stable V8/javascript
> >> > support currently, so it would either have to be done manually or swig
> >> > would have to be modified.
> >> >
> >> > The significant problem though is that many Xapian calls are
> >> > long-running, so need to be run in a sub-thread or sub-process.  Is
> >> > there any built-in support for that sort of thing in Node now? (there
> >> > wasn't when I last looked).
> >> >
> >> > Alternatively, you could just make a client in V8 for a search server
> >> > built around Xapian (eg; http://restpose.org).
> >>
> >>
> >> I also looked into this a few months ago and I think a naive
> >> implementation
> >> would be easy. The issue I have is how to avoid blocking the main event
> >> loop
> >> in Node.js. Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I think using
> >> futures
> >> or promises to avoid blocking would be an alternative to just forking
> and
> >> polling. Otherwise, I think that an API client to Restpose is a
> reasonable
> >> solution
> >>
> >
> > Preventing a library call from blocking Node is easy; there's a thread
> pool
> > to which you queue with a single call. There's sample code in the project
> I
> > linked. Typically you'd reduce trips through the thread pool during
> result
> > iteration via a method like get_n(max, result_callback, done_callback),
> > which is a little more involved.
> >
> > V8 doesn't support SWIG, but wrapping the entire api might not be
> necessary
> > to get started. Extending a working module is simple.
> >
> > A client for Restpose, assuming it's socket-based, could be done in Node
> > Javascript. That would be a decent way for me to prototype, absent a
> > binding...
> >
>
> Perhaps we can define a subset of the API to implement initially in a
> binding. What are the essential routines to issue a query and retrieve
> results, and how are they typically used?
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Hi Liam,

Take a look at our quickstart <http://xapian.org/docs/quickstart.html> for
the bare minimum of what is required to perform a search. Also, you might
find the smoketests for the various language bindings helpful. I have a
little interest in seeing Node bindings get built due to my curiosity for
the language implementation. If I have some time over the weekend, I'll try
out a spike. In the meantime feel free to share anything you've written.

--Dan