async-compat

Compatibility adapter between tokio and futures.

There are two kinds of compatibility issues between tokio and futures:

2. Tokio's types cannot be used outside tokio context, so any attempt to use them will panic.
   • Solution: If you apply the Compat adapter to a future, the future will enter the context of a global single-threaded tokio runtime started by this crate. That does not mean the future runs on the tokio runtime - it only means the future sets a thread-local variable pointing to the global tokio runtime so that tokio's types can be used inside it.
3. Tokio and futures have similar but different I/O traits AsyncRead, AsyncWrite, AsyncBufRead, and AsyncSeek.
   • Solution: When the Compat adapter is applied to an I/O type, it will implement traits of the opposite kind. That's how you can use tokio-based types wherever futures-based types are expected, and the other way around.

Examples

This program reads lines from stdin and echoes them into stdout, except it's not going to work:

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    futures::executor::block_on(async {
        let stdin = tokio::io::stdin();
        let mut stdout = tokio::io::stdout();

        // The following line will not work for two reasons:
        // 1. Runtime error because stdin and stdout are used outside tokio context.
        // 2. Compilation error due to mismatched `AsyncRead` and `AsyncWrite` traits.
        futures::io::copy(stdin, &mut stdout).await?;
        Ok(())
    })
}

To get around the compatibility issues, apply the Compat adapter to stdin, stdout, and futures::io::copy():

use async_compat::CompatExt;

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    futures::executor::block_on(async {
        let stdin = tokio::io::stdin();
        let mut stdout = tokio::io::stdout();

        futures::io::copy(stdin.compat(), &mut stdout.compat_mut()).compat().await?;
        Ok(())
    })
}

It is also possible to apply Compat to the outer future passed to futures::executor::block_on() rather than futures::io::copy() itself. When applied to the outer future, individual inner futures don't need the adapter because they're all now inside tokio context:

use async_compat::{Compat, CompatExt};

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    futures::executor::block_on(Compat::new(async {
        let stdin = tokio::io::stdin();
        let mut stdout = tokio::io::stdout();

        futures::io::copy(stdin.compat(), &mut stdout.compat_mut()).await?;
        Ok(())
    }))
}

The compatibility adapter converts between tokio-based and futures-based I/O types in any direction. Here's how we can write the same program by using futures-based I/O types inside tokio:

use async_compat::CompatExt;
use blocking::Unblock;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let mut stdin = Unblock::new(std::io::stdin());
    let mut stdout = Unblock::new(std::io::stdout());

    tokio::io::copy(&mut stdin.compat_mut(), &mut stdout.compat_mut()).await?;
    Ok(())
}

Finally, we can use any tokio-based crate from any other async runtime. Here are reqwest and warp as an example:

use async_compat::{Compat, CompatExt};
use warp::Filter;

fn main() {
    futures::executor::block_on(Compat::new(async {
        // Make an HTTP GET request.
        let response = reqwest::get("https://www.rust-lang.org").await.unwrap();
        println!("{}", response.text().await.unwrap());

        // Start an HTTP server.
        let routes = warp::any().map(|| "Hello from warp!");
        warp::serve(routes).run(([127, 0, 0, 1], 8080)).await;
    }))
}

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.