A cross-platform C++ networking library providing TCP, QUIC, HTTP/3, HTTP/1.1, and WebTransport client/server functionality with modern C++ features. Builds for native Linux and for the browser (wasm32-wasip1).
Crafter.Network is a C++ networking library designed for modern C++ applications. It provides TCP, QUIC, HTTP/3, HTTP/1.1, and WebTransport-over-HTTP/3 capabilities with support for synchronous and asynchronous operations, making it suitable for a wide range of networking tasks including real-time multiplayer games. The same source compiles for native Linux (via msquic + POSIX sockets) and for the browser (via `fetch()` + `WebTransport` JS APIs); see [Browser build](#browser-build).
- **QUIC Networking**: Encrypted, multi-stream transport via msquic — reliable streams for control plane, unreliable datagrams for low-latency state sync.
- **HTTP/3**: Client and server implementations on top of QUIC. Uses ALPN `h3`, QUIC bidi streams for requests/responses, the mandatory unidirectional control stream + SETTINGS frame (RFC 9114 §6.2.1), the (empty) QPACK encoder + decoder unidi streams required by stricter peers like Chromium, and a built-in QPACK codec (RFC 9204) with the full static table, Huffman *decoding* (RFC 7541), and literal-only emission. The QPACK dynamic table is unused. The client is interoperable with mainstream public h3 endpoints (cloudflare, nghttp3-based servers, etc.).
- **HTTP/1.1**: Client and server over plain TCP (RFC 9112), for the large part of the world that is not ready for HTTP/3 — old proxies, CI tooling, load balancers, `curl` scripts. Shares the `HTTPRequest`/`HTTPResponse` types and the route-map API — including the `fallback` hook for paths that cannot be enumerated — with the HTTP/3 stack, so a handler or call site moves between the two by changing the class name. Keep-alive and pipelining, `content-length` and `chunked` bodies with trailers, `Expect: 100-continue`, HEAD, automatic `Date`, and per-connection timeouts. `https://` on both sides via libssl, including ALPN and mutual TLS — see [HTTP/1.1 Components](#http11-components).
- **WebTransport (server)**: `ListenerHTTP` accepts extended-CONNECT sessions (`:method=CONNECT, :protocol=webtransport`) negotiated on the existing h3 listener — no separate port or alternate stack. Both draft-02 and draft-07+ identifier sets are advertised in SETTINGS so current Chrome/Edge browsers connect out of the box. Per-route handlers receive a `WebTransportSession&` and can multiplex bidirectional streams over the session.
- **Browser client**: Same C++ API compiled to wasm32-wasip1 and routed through `fetch()` (for `ClientHTTP`) and `WebTransport` (for `ClientQUIC`). Listeners and raw TCP are not compiled in the browser build — the browser is client-only.
- **Asynchronous Operations**: Thread pool–based async operations on native; the same `*Async` API on the browser side, where it's required (no synchronous I/O in the browser event loop).
- **Cross-Platform**: Native Linux (POSIX sockets + msquic) and browser (wasm32-wasip1).
-`Crafter.Network:ClientHTTP1`: HTTP/1.1 client over TCP, plaintext or TLS (native only)
-`Crafter.Network:ListenerHTTP1`: HTTP/1.1 server over TCP, plaintext or TLS (native only)
-`Crafter.Network:Stream`: `ByteStream` — a reliable byte stream with deadlines on both directions — plus `PlainStream`, the plaintext socket implementation. The seam that lets one HTTP/1.1 implementation serve `http://` and `https://` (native only)
-`Crafter.Network:TLS`: TLS over a connected socket via libssl (OpenSSL 3): `TLSContext`, `TLSStream`, and the credential types for both roles. Protocol-agnostic — usable over any descriptor, not just HTTP (native only)
-`Crafter.Network:HTTP1`: HTTP/1.1 wire format — serialisation plus an incremental parser (RFC 9112). Transport-free; usable on its own to speak HTTP/1.1 over some other byte stream. Native only, for the same reason as `:HTTP3`
-`Crafter.Network:ClientQUIC`: QUIC connection (client + accepted-server side) with reliable streams and unreliable datagrams. On browser builds this maps to the `WebTransport` JS API.
-`Crafter.Network:ListenerQUIC`: QUIC listener accepting incoming connections (native only). Also exports `ComputeCertificateHashSHA256()` and `GetSelfSignedCertificatePath()` for browser-peer cert pinning.
-`Crafter.Network:WebTransport`: `WebTransportSession` type — the per-session handle handed to `ListenerHTTP` WT route handlers.
-`Crafter.Network:HTTP3`: HTTP/3 wire-format helpers (QUIC varint, frame layer, QPACK static-table codec, WT frame/setting constants). Re-exported on native, excluded on browser (it uses `throw` and the wasm build is `-fno-exceptions`).
HTTP/3 runs over QUIC, which always requires TLS. Pass server credentials when constructing the listener (or set `selfSigned = true` for a development-only ephemeral cert) and matching client credentials when constructing the client (`insecureNoServerValidation = true` for self-signed servers).
The `HTTPRequest` exposes the four HTTP/3 pseudo-headers (`method`, `scheme`, `authority`, `path`) as named struct fields rather than mixing them into the regular `headers` map. Routes are dispatched by exact match on `path` and then on the query-stripped path; anything still unmatched goes to [`fallback`](#routes-that-cannot-be-enumerated) if one is set and returns a synthetic 404 otherwise.
HTTP/3 is not something every peer can be made to speak. `ClientHTTP1` and `ListenerHTTP1` provide the same API over TCP — with or without TLS — using the same `HTTPRequest`/`HTTPResponse` types and the same route-map shape, so a handler can be registered with both and served over either protocol.
The connection is persistent: the first `Send()` dials, and later calls reuse the socket unless the peer asked for it to be closed. A pooled connection that the peer closed while it looked idle — the race HTTP/1.1 keep-alive cannot avoid — is redialled once and the request replayed; nothing is replayed once a response byte has arrived, and a freshly dialled connection is never retried on, so a genuinely broken server surfaces as an exception rather than a retry loop. `authority` defaults to the host:port the client was constructed with (the port is elided when it is the scheme default — 443 under TLS, 80 without).
Each accepted connection gets its own thread and is served sequentially until the peer closes it, a `Connection: close` is seen, or a timeout expires (`keepAliveTimeout`, default 15 s between requests; `requestTimeout`, default 30 s for one request to arrive). A dedicated thread rather than a ThreadPool task is deliberate: keep-alive connections are idle most of their life and would otherwise pin every pool thread.
Routing matches `path` exactly and then falls back to the query-stripped path, so `/thing?x=1` reaches the handler registered for `/thing` while the handler still sees the full target in `request.path`. A handler that throws becomes a 500; an unknown path a 404 (or `fallback`, see [Routes that cannot be enumerated](#routes-that-cannot-be-enumerated)); a request we refuse to parse a 400. `Date` is stamped automatically unless the handler set one, HEAD returns the headers a GET would have produced with no body, and a handler can end the connection by answering with a `connection: close` header.
Implemented: TLS (see [HTTPS](#https)), keep-alive, pipelining, `content-length` and `chunked` request bodies with trailers, `Expect: 100-continue`, absolute-form request targets, obs-fold, and HTTP/1.0 peers (which only get connection reuse when they ask for it). Not implemented: CONNECT tunnels, `Upgrade`, and chunked *responses* — handlers return a complete body, so responses are always `content-length` framed.
Ambiguous framing is rejected rather than guessed at, because guessing is how request smuggling happens (RFC 9112 §11.2): `Content-Length` together with `Transfer-Encoding`, disagreeing duplicate `Content-Length` values, and whitespace between a field name and its colon are all 400s. CR/LF in a header value we are asked to *send* throws instead of splitting the message.
`https://` is a constructor argument, not a different class. Pass credentials and every byte goes through libssl (OpenSSL 3); leave them out and the transport is plaintext. Nothing above the transport changes — same routes, same keep-alive and replay rules, same framing.
```cpp
// Server. selfSigned mints an ephemeral development certificate; in
// production set certPath/keyPath (or certPem/keyPem) instead.
To verify a self-signed or privately issued server without giving up verification, hand the client the certificate as a trust anchor (`caPath` for a file or hashed directory, `caPem` for the bytes) rather than reaching for `insecureNoServerValidation` — that switch accepts an attacker's certificate too, and exists for development only.
ALPN is negotiated: the listener advertises `http/1.1` and a client offering only something else (say `h2`) is refused with `no_application_protocol` rather than being served an HTTP/1.1 response it cannot parse. `alpnProtocols` on either side changes what is offered or accepted. Requests reach handlers with `scheme` set to `https`, so a handler shared with `ListenerHTTP` sees the same thing over both protocols.
Mutual TLS: set `requireClientCertificate` with a `clientCaPath`, and a peer presenting no certificate — or one that does not chain to that CA — is rejected during the handshake. `HandshakeFailureCount()` counts connections dropped that way; on a public port those are ordinary traffic (scanners, misconfigured callers) rather than something to alert on. Client certificates are supplied by `certPath`/`keyPath` on `TLSClientCredentials`.
The handshake runs on the connection's own thread, so a peer that stalls halfway through it costs one thread rather than the accept loop. `handshakeTimeout` (default 15 s) bounds it on both sides.
For an encrypted transport with better properties than TLS-over-TCP, `ClientHTTP`/`ListenerHTTP` speak HTTP/3 over QUIC, which is always encrypted.
#### TLS on its own
`Crafter::TLSContext` and `Crafter::TLSStream` are transport-agnostic: anything holding a connected descriptor can put a record layer over it, HTTP or not. `TLSStream` implements `Crafter::ByteStream` — the same interface `PlainStream` implements and the HTTP/1.1 endpoints are written against — so code that reads and writes through a `ByteStream&` works over either.
```cpp
Crafter::ClientTCP socket("example.com", 443);
auto context = Crafter::TLSContext::Client({});
auto stream = Crafter::TLSStream::Connect(socket.socketid, context,
The descriptor stays owned by its `ClientTCP`; the stream only adds the record layer. Both factories complete the handshake before returning, so a stream you hold is one you can write to, and both throw `Crafter::TLSException` — with the specific certificate error, not just "handshake failed" — when they cannot. Reads and writes are driven by `poll()` against a deadline, which is what makes the timeouts real; the descriptor is put into non-blocking mode to allow it.
`GetSelfSignedCertificatePem()` returns the process-wide development certificate (ECDSA P-256, `CN=localhost`, SANs for `localhost`/`127.0.0.1`/`::1`, 10 days) so it can be written out for a peer process or handed to a client as a trust anchor. It is generated in-process and regenerated on every start — no peer has any reason to trust it.
`Crafter::HTTP1` exposes the codec without the transport — `SerializeRequest` / `SerializeResponse` and an incremental `MessageParser` that takes arbitrary byte chunks and yields one message at a time. Useful for speaking HTTP/1.1 over a byte stream this library does not own.
The route map only answers paths known when the listener is built. `/shop/<slug>`, `/order/<token>`, `/posts/<id>` cannot be pre-registered — the token space is unbounded and the product set changes while the server runs. Both listeners therefore take an optional `fallback`, called for any request the route map missed, with the full target still in `request.path`:
```cpp
auto router = [](const Crafter::HTTPRequest& request) {
auto path = Crafter::PathWithoutQueryHTTP(request.path); // everything up to '?'
if (path.starts_with("/shop/")) return RenderProduct(path.substr(6));
Crafter::ListenerAsyncHTTP quic(4443, creds, std::move(routes), router); // same handler over HTTP/3
```
Dispatch precedence is the same on both: exact `path`, then the query-stripped path, then `fallback`, then a synthetic 404. So a fallback only ever sees what the route map did not claim, and leaving it unset keeps the previous behaviour exactly.
This is deliberately a hook rather than a pattern-matching syntax. Consumers that already have a router — one shared between a wasm frontend and the server, say, so a URL cannot mean different things to a crawler and to the app — keep using it, and there is no second route table to disagree with the first. A throwing fallback becomes a 500, like any other handler. On `ListenerHTTP` it applies to `routes` only; an unmatched WebTransport CONNECT is still a 404, since a WT handler has a different signature.
`fallback` is a plain public member on `ListenerHTTP`/`ListenerHTTP1` and may be assigned before `Listen()`. The `ListenerAsync*` wrappers start accepting inside their constructor, so there they have to be passed as the trailing constructor argument shown above — assigning afterwards races the accept loop.
`ListenerHTTP` has a WT-aware constructor overload that takes a second route map keyed by `:path`. When the map is non-empty the listener advertises both draft-02 (`SETTINGS_ENABLE_WEBTRANSPORT = 0x2b603742`) and draft-07+ (`SETTINGS_WT_MAX_SESSIONS = 0xc671706a`) identifiers in its SETTINGS frame so current browsers connect. An extended-CONNECT request (`:method=CONNECT, :protocol=webtransport`) whose `:path` matches a registered route is accepted with a `200` (no FIN), upgraded into a `WebTransportSession`, and dispatched on the ThreadPool. Plain HTTP/3 routes and WT routes coexist on the same listener and port.
Browser-initiated bidi/unidi WebTransport streams arrive via `session.OnStream(...)`. The `WT_BIDI` (`0x41`) / `WT_UNIDI` (`0x54`) stream-type prefix and session-id varint are stripped before the user handler sees the stream; what the handler reads is pure session payload. Phase 1 covers session establishment + bidirectional streams; WebTransport datagrams and capsule-protocol control are stubbed for a follow-up.
### Self-signed certs & browser peers
Passing `QUICServerCredentials{selfSigned = true}` makes the listener generate (and cache) an ephemeral cert at `/tmp/crafter-network-quic-cert/{cert,key}.pem` and reuse it across server restarts while it's still valid. The cert is shaped to satisfy Chromium's `WebTransport.serverCertificateHashes` rules: ECDSA P-256, signed with ECDSA-SHA256, validity ≤14 days (10 in practice), `BasicConstraints CA:FALSE`, `KeyUsage digitalSignature`, `EKU serverAuth`, `SAN=DNS:localhost,IP:127.0.0.1,IP:::1`. To let a browser peer pin this cert without trusting a CA:
```cpp
auto certPath = Crafter::GetSelfSignedCertificatePath();
auto hash = Crafter::ComputeCertificateHashSHA256(certPath); // 32-byte SHA-256 of cert DER
// Publish hash to the browser (e.g. write hex to a file the page can fetch);
// on the browser side feed it into QUICClientCredentials::serverCertificateHash.
```
For production use a real cert (`certPath` + `keyPath` on `QUICServerCredentials`).
## Browser build
Crafter.Network compiles for `wasm32-wasip1` via [Crafter.Build](https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts/Crafter.Build); the build path is selected automatically when `cfg.target.find("wasm") != npos`. On that target:
-`CRAFTER_NETWORK_BROWSER` is defined. Synchronous methods on `ClientHTTP` / `QUICStream` / `ClientQUIC` are not compiled — only the `*Async` variants are available.
-`ClientHTTP` calls into `crafterNetworkFetch` (JS) which delegates to `fetch()`. An empty `host` is a same-origin sentinel: the path is passed through as the URL, so `ClientHTTP("", 0).SendAsync({.path="/data.json"}, ...)` fetches from the page origin.
-`ClientQUIC` calls into `crafterNetworkWtConnect` which constructs a `WebTransport(url, opts)` against `https://{host}:{port}/{alpn}` (i.e. `alpn` is the WebTransport URL path on this target). `QUICClientCredentials::serverCertificateHash` is forwarded as `serverCertificateHashes`; leaving it zeroed makes the browser fall back to its normal trust store.
-`ListenerTCP`, `ListenerHTTP`, `ListenerQUIC`, `ClientTCP`, and the sync receive/send paths are excluded — the browser is client-only. So are `ClientHTTP1` / `ListenerHTTP1` / the `HTTP1` codec: a page cannot open a raw TCP socket anyway, and `fetch()` behind `ClientHTTP` already negotiates whatever HTTP version the server offers.
-`additional/network-env.js` is shipped alongside the produced `.wasm` and merged into the runtime's `env` import object by `EnableWasiBrowserRuntime`.
A worked example pairing a wasm browser client with a native server lives in [examples/SimpleClient/](examples/SimpleClient/). Build the server with `crafter-build --target=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu`, run it, then run `crafter-build` (no `--target`) to produce the wasm and serve it over HTTPS.
The project is a single Crafter.Build configuration (`crafter-network`, `ConfigurationType::LibraryStatic`). Target selection and debug flags are handled by `ApplyStandardArgs`:
- HTTP/3 round-trip (`ShouldSendRecieveHTTP`) — canonical local client/server round-trip
- HTTP/3 connection multiplexing (`ShouldSendRecieveKeepaliveHTTP`) — two requests share one QUIC connection
- HTTP/3 large body transfer (`ShouldSendRecieveLargeHTTP`) — 10 MiB POST
- HTTP/3 external interop (`ShouldSend`) — live fetch from `cloudflare-quic.com:443`, exercises real TLS chain validation, mandatory control stream, peer-initiated unidi streams, and QPACK Huffman decoding
- HTTP/1.1 wire format (`ShouldParseHTTP1`) — serialisation, incremental parsing fed one byte at a time, chunked bodies with trailers, pipelining, interim 1xx, HTTP/1.0 and HEAD framing, and the malformed inputs the parser is required to reject
- HTTP/1.1 round-trip (`ShouldSendRecieveHTTP1`) — routing, query strings, HEAD, 404 and a throwing handler
- HTTP/1.1 keep-alive (`ShouldSendRecieveKeepaliveHTTP1`) — connection reuse, handler-requested close, and recovery from a pooled connection the server closed
- HTTP/1.1 large body transfer (`ShouldSendRecieveLargeHTTP1`) — 10 MiB in both directions on one connection
- HTTP/1.1 interop (`ShouldInteropCurlHTTP1`) — `curl` against `ListenerHTTP1` (keep-alive reuse, chunked upload, `Expect: 100-continue`, HEAD) and `ClientHTTP1` against python3's `http.server`, which answers HTTP/1.0 with `Connection: close`
- HTTP/1.1 under abuse (`ShouldSurviveAbuseHTTP1`) — 24 concurrent keep-alive clients, peers that vanish mid-request or send garbage, and a stalled peer that must be timed out
- Fallback routing (`ShouldFallbackUnknownRoutes`) — one route map plus a `fallback` replayed over both `ListenerHTTP1` and `ListenerHTTP`, asserting identical answers: exact routes win, query strings still route to the bare path, the fallback sees the full target, a throwing fallback is a 500, and an unset fallback still means a synthetic 404
- HTTPS round-trip (`ShouldSendRecieveHTTPS1`) — the plaintext round-trip replayed over TLS, so a transport regression surfaces as an HTTP failure, plus what only exists under TLS: ALPN, `scheme=https` reaching handlers, a body spanning many records, verification failing for an untrusted certificate *and* for a trusted certificate presented under the wrong name, and a plaintext peer on the TLS port being counted and shrugged off
- HTTPS interop (`ShouldInteropCurlHTTPS1`) — `curl` verifying our certificate with `--cacert` (not `--insecure`): keep-alive reuse, POST, HEAD, negotiated version, and an h2-only client being refused rather than mis-served; then `ClientHTTP1` against python3's `http.server` behind `ssl.wrap_socket`, whose HTTP/1.0 `Connection: close` frames the body by `close_notify`
- Mutual TLS and the raw stream (`ShouldRequireClientCertificateHTTPS1`) — a client certificate the listener's CA vouches for is served and one absent is refused; `TLSStream` is also driven directly with hand-written HTTP/1.1 to keep `:TLS` usable without `:ClientHTTP1` on top
The external-interop test requires outbound UDP/443; if your network blocks it the test will fail. `ShouldInteropCurlHTTP1` and `ShouldInteropCurlHTTPS1` skip whichever half is unavailable when `curl` or `python3` is not installed, and the mutual-TLS half of `ShouldRequireClientCertificateHTTPS1` skips without the `openssl` CLI (a *client* certificate needs the `clientAuth` extended key usage, which the built-in development certificate does not carry) — so all three pass on a bare machine. Install `curl`, `python3` and `openssl` to actually exercise them.
- **msquic** (native target only) — fetched and built automatically as a Crafter `ExternalDependency` (no system install required). The build clones `microsoft/msquic` recursively into the per-project external cache, configures it via CMake (`QUIC_TLS_LIB=quictls`, tests/tools/perf disabled), and links the produced `libmsquic` into the QUIC and HTTP/3 modules. Skipped entirely on browser builds.
- The self-signed-cert path used by tests/dev shells out to the `openssl` CLI; install `openssl` if you intend to use `QUICServerCredentials{selfSigned = true}`. The same path also produces the cert hash that browser peers need for `serverCertificateHashes`.
- **libssl / libcrypto** (OpenSSL 3, native target only) — a *system* package, unlike msquic, linked via `-lssl -lcrypto`. Backs `Crafter.Network:TLS`, i.e. `https://` on the HTTP/1.1 client and listener. It is not built here on purpose: OpenSSL 3 is present on every platform this targets, and vendoring it would mean shipping a second TLS stack next to the one msquic already links (quictls, whose symbols stay inside `libmsquic.so`). Install your distro's OpenSSL development package (`openssl` on Arch, `libssl-dev` on Debian/Ubuntu). Certificate generation for `TLSServerCredentials{selfSigned = true}` happens in-process through this library — no `openssl` CLI needed.
- Plaintext HTTP/1.1 needs nothing beyond POSIX sockets: `ClientHTTP1`/`ListenerHTTP1` built without credentials pull in no msquic and touch no TLS code path.
- **Browser build** has no extra dependencies beyond Crafter.Build's `wasi-browser` runtime: HTTP delegates to the browser's `fetch()`, QUIC to its `WebTransport`. The JS glue lives in `additional/network-env.js` and is shipped alongside the produced `.wasm`.
This library is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3 only (LGPL-3.0-only). See [LICENSE](LICENSE) for the license text. The LGPL supplements the GNU General Public License version 3, a copy of which is included as [LICENSE.GPL](LICENSE.GPL).
The example code under [examples/](examples/) is licensed under the MIT license (see [examples/SimpleClient/LICENSE](examples/SimpleClient/LICENSE)), so it can be freely copied into your own projects.