vert.x

What is vert.x?

The next generation polyglot asynchronous application framework. (Formerly known as node.x)

• Runs on the JVM.
• Embraces the good bits of event driven frameworks like node.js then adds some even juicier bits.
• Everything is non-blocking.
• Polyglot. vert.x will be usable from multiple languages: Ruby, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Python, Clojure, Scala. Currently we support Java and Ruby. Write your code in the language you choose. Leverage the power of vert.x from that language.
• Goes with the recent developments with InvokeDynamic in Java 7 and bets on the JVM being the future premier runtime for dynamic languages.
• Enables you to create network servers or clients incredibly easily.
• True scalability. Unlike other well-known event-driven frameworks, you can have more than one event loop per process. No more spinning up 32 instances just to utilise the cores on your server.
• Incredibly simple [concurrency model] (https://github.com/purplefox/vert.x/wiki/Concurrency-model). Write your code as single threaded but watch it scale across multiple cores. No need to worry about race conditions or locks.
• Understands multiple network protocols out of the box including: TCP, SSL, HTTP, HTTPS, Websockets.
• Efficiently serve static files from the filesystem bypassing user-space altogether.
• Simple Sinatra/Express style resource based web routing.
• Distributed event bus. Multiple vert.x instances work together seamlessly to provide a distributed event bus

Jump to the examples

Take a look at some of these working Ruby examples to see the kind of things you can do with vert.x

Ruby examples

Java examples

API docs

API docs in Java and Ruby are [here] (http://purplefox.github.com/vert.x/)

What is the status of vert.x?

The first binary release, vert.x 0.1, has been released.

You can find the Road-map [here] (https://github.com/purplefox/vert.x/wiki/Road-map)

What is the architecture?

vert.x core is currently written in Java. We then provide a thin layer in each of the JVM languages we support which allows the API to be used in each of the supported languages.

We do not expose the Java API directly in the other languages since we wish to retain the normal coding idioms for each supported language.

We don't leak Java stuff to other languages through the API.

vert.x internally uses Netty for much of the asynchronous IO.

Building from source

Instructions for building vert.x from source are here

Installation and running the examples

Instructions for installing and running vert.x are are [here] (https://github.com/purplefox/vert.x/wiki/Installation-and-running)

Development and user discussions

vert.x Google Group

FAQ

FAQ [here] (https://github.com/purplefox/vert.x/wiki/FAQ)

IRC

There's an IRC channel at irc.freenode.net#vertx if you want to drop in to chat about any user or development topics

Join us!!

There is lots to do! We are looking for contributors - both individual and corporate. Ping @timfox on twitter, or post on the vert.x Google Group.