Streaming Responses
In some cases, you may want to stream large responses back to clients. Streaming uses memory efficiently and can allow you to return a response larger than the service’s memory. It also allows a client to start consuming data as quickly as possible.
Streaming responses are a feature of the
servlet-interceptor.adoc.
It is entirely a function of the type of the body of the response-map.adoc, i.e., (→ context :response :body type).
| Type | Streamed? | Async? |
|---|---|---|
Byte array | No | No |
String | No | No |
Clojure collection | No | No |
Function | Yes | No |
File | Yes | No |
InputStream | Yes | No |
ReadableByteChannel | Yes | Yes |
ByteBuffer | Yes | Yes |
{core_async} channel | Yes | Yes |
Async responses use non-blocking I/O. Not all containers support async responses.
Using a Function as the Response
When the body is a function, the servlet-interceptor calls that
function with a single argument: a javax.servlet.ServletOutputStream.
The response status code and headers will already be written to the stream before calling the function.
The function should close the stream when it is done.
The function’s return value is ignored.
The function may run as long as it needs. This will occupy a thread,
so consider using a {core_async} go or thread block.
Using a Collection as the Response
A collection will be rendered into text via clojure.core/pr. This
emits a valid EDN encoding of the data.
The entire collection will be emitted. This means lazy sequences will be fully realized.
Rendering collections is subject to *print-length*, *print-level*,
and all other variables that affect clojure.core/pr.
Using a {core_async} Channel as the Response
When the response body is a channel, every message read from the channel will be sent to the client as it is produced.
If the client disconnects, the channel will be closed.
Uses
Here are some examples of potentially large values that you might want to stream back to clients:
-
the contents of a lazy sequence
-
a file or resource stored on disk
-
a byte stream retrieved from some service, e.g., an image on S3
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