tl;dr
Server side Swift is super snappy, the performance is incredible, and the memory footprint is tiny.
Swift in its nature of being strictly type hinted (and the Internet is very ”stringy”) makes some operations like models to have a lot of boiler plate. Vapor tries to overcome this with its Node package.
Intro
After doing all my web development in PHP since version 4.1 (the dark ages), I almost gave up a few years ago and decided to learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails. By accident, I discovered Laravel and have been using it since. I have also been programming mobile apps in Swift and Objective-C for Apple’s platforms and released my first app on iTunes Store in 2010.
The developers of Vapor credits Laravel as an excellent framework, and early on, it was an inspiration for them when writing a server side web framework for Swift. I did decide to give it a try.
The inspiration from Laravel shows very well when you start digging into Vapor. So, If you’re a Laravel/PHP user, Vapor should look familiar to get you started. Swift in it self is influenced by functional programming, so you will get a lot of the collection functionality you find in Laravel straight out of the box. Regarding features, I would say Vapor 2 sits somewhere between Lumen and Laravel. I think it’s always an excellent idea to learn more languages to understand the bigger picture.
Vapor is already one of the most used web frameworks for Swift, and the HTTP server and WebSocket are also written in pure Swift. That may give the framework a slight performance penalty compared to others that are using low-level APIs, on the other side it’s not dependent on compiled 3rd party libraries which make Vapor easier to use. Rumors tell that Apple is starting to use this framework internally.
The language Swift it self is designed to be deployed on small devices with restricted resources. Therefore running Swift on a server is very efficient with a low memory footprint. That is interesting because if you run applications in a cloud, most clouds charge you by memory usage.
We all know the controversies of benchmarks, and it’s not the whole picture. Swift is a compiled language and PHP is a scripting language. You cannot compare these straight off. Anyway, I decided to build a simple CRUD-app with Vapor 2 and Swift and see how it ”feels” instead.
Install Xcode, Homebrew Tap and Vapor
Follow the instructions on Vapor’s site Install: macOS - Vapor Docs
Important, make sure that you have launched Xcode at least once otherwise some needed components are not installed. Also, check Xcode > Preferences > Locations > Command Line Tools that the tools are installed.
After you have installed Vapor, we will continue to install the necessary drivers for MySQL.
Create a new project
Should not be to unfamiliar if you are used to Laravel Artisan
vapor new RadioAPI --template=web
cd RadioAPI
Generate a Xcode project by entering.
vapor xcode
After the generation is done, press y to open the Xcode project.
Select right scheme and press the play-button to the left.
Visit http://localhost:8080 and you should see that it works.
Install C MySQL library
Since you are a Laravel developer, I assume you are using Laravel Valet and have MySQL installed via Homebrew. Otherwise, install MySQL with homebrew.
brew install mysql
If you are using MAMP, you have to quit MAMP’s MySQL-server first. You cannot have both MySQL running on the same ports.
To use MySQL in Vapor, you need to have the C MySQL library installed on your computer.
brew install vapor/tap/cmysql
Install and configure MySQL-drivers
Next, we are going to configure the MySQL-connection. Since I am used to MySQL, and it’s officially supported I am going to stick with MySQL in this example.
Open Package.swift and add this dependency:
.Package(url: "https://github.com/vapor/mysql-provider.git", majorVersion: 2)
Save and update the Swift packages with this command in the terminal (just like composer update in PHP):
swift build
And rebuild the Xcode project to Xcode can resolve the new modules
vapor xcode
Create a MySQL-database with your preferred tool. I use Sequel Pro.
Create mysql.json and save inside Config/ in your Vapor-project. Add your connection settings
{
"hostname": "127.0.0.1",
"user": "root",
"password": "",
"database": "vapor"
}
Since we like Laravel Eloquent so much we are going to go for Vapor’s equivalent – Fluent. Add MySQL as the driver in Config/fluent.json
{
"driver": "mysql"
}
Test your setup
Replace Sources/Run/main.swift with this
import App
import MySQLProvider
let config = try Config()
try config.addProvider(MySQLProvider.Provider.self)
try config.setup()
let drop = try Droplet(config)
try drop.setup()
drop.get("version") { request in
let db = try drop.mysql()
let version = try db.raw("SELECT version()")
return JSON(node: version)
}
try drop.run()
A droplet in Vapor is equivalent to Laravel’s concept of the service container. In advanced setups, you can even have several droplets. Just to make sure it all works we add this directly here, but we will delete this later on.
Hit click the Run-button in Xcode to compile your changes
Open your web browser and visit* http://localhost:8080/version
