Lightsocket   

A lightweight ZeroMQ socket server for the JVM (written in Jython for now)


What is Lightsocket?

Lightsocket is a lightweight ZeroMQ socket server for the JVM. I originally 
wrote it to provide a way for Bulbs to plug into the JVM because I needed
to load WordNet from NTLK (which is in Python) into the Neo4j Batch Loader
(which is in Java). But it's generic enough that you can add other 
resource modules to extend it to do whatever you want.

An Example resource is provided in lightsocket/resources dir, as well as a 
Blueprints Neo4j resource.
 
Is it ready?

It works for what it was designed for, but it's not meant to be used as a 
production server (at least not yet). I will continue to develop it and 
use it to experiment with ZeroMQ and binary serialization/RPC protocols. 

It's written in Jython so it's easy to extend, but Jython isn't as fast as
the normal C Python and it isn't the most performant of the JVM languages. 
We could obviously make it faster by rewriting it in Java or Scala.

What do I need?

If you're just using the base server, you need to install these packages (I plan 
on automating this real soon now):

* ZeroMQ (http://www.zeromq.org/intro:get-the-software), 
  requires uuid-devel, glibc-devel, libuuid-devel
  add /usr/local/lib to ld.so.conf for pyzmq

  See http://www.zeromq.org/docs:source-git

* jzmq, (for detailed install instructions, see 
  http://lists.zeromq.org/pipermail/zeromq-dev/2011-October/013762.html). The Java 
  ZeroMQ binding (As jzmq is both, Java and C++ Code, you might have to use two 
  build tools):

  $ git clone https://github.com/zeromq/jzmq.git
  $ cd jzmq
  $ ./autogen.sh
  $ ./configure.sh
  $ ./make
  $ sudo ./make install
  $ mvn clean install
 * Build using make:
  $ ./autogen.sh
  $ ./configure.sh
  $ ./make
  $ sudo ./make install
  If you don't install the C++ libs in a regular system lib path, 
  you will have to introduce them to Java / Jython via
  $ java -Djava.library.path=/path/to/lib -classpath /path/to/zeromq/jar/

* Jython >=2.5.1 (http://www.jython.org/downloads.html)

* Jackson JSON (http://jackson.codehaus.org/)

* Google Gson (http://code.google.com/p/google-gson/)

If you want to load WordNet into through Blueprints into Neo4j, you will also need:

* Bulbs (http://bulbflow.com)

* Blueprints (https://github.com/tinkerpop/blueprints)

* Rexster (https://github.com/tinkerpop/rexster/wiki)

Where are the docs?

These are the docs at the moment, and resources/example.py is an annotated for you.

You will need to edit startup.sh and init.py, which are located in the root dir.

Soon I will put up real docs and more examples at http://lightsocket.bulbflow.com .

How do I test it out?

After you install the libs above, open two terminals and cd to Lightsocket's root 
dir -- on terminal for the client, one for the server.

Install the ZeroMQ Python client (see the comments in client_example.py for details):

$ easy_instal pyzmq

Start the Lightsocket server:

$ ./startup.sh

You should see something like this:

Starting Lightsocket...
Ready to receive requests...

Now run the client test:

$ python client_example.py

You should see something like this:

Connecting to Lightsocket...
1000 0.266904830933 0.000266904830933 3746.65380355
2000 0.543519020081 0.00027175951004 3679.72403193
3000 0.819408893585 0.000273136297862 3661.17578597
4000 1.0937628746 0.000273440718651 3657.09980918
5000 1.37030100822 0.000274060201645 3648.83333661
6000 1.64268684387 0.000273781140645 3652.55253756
7000 1.91710591316 0.000273872273309 3651.3371285
8000 2.19388985634 0.000274236232042 3646.49117497
9000 2.46431183815 0.000273812426461 3652.1351968
10000 2.73796105385 0.000273796105385 3652.35290179
Requests Per Second:  3652.13155741

To get better performance, you could run multiple clients or use a C or C++ client.

Where can I get help?

The Gremlin User group (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gremlin-users)
of email me at james@jamesthornton.com.

Please feel free to fork it and send me pulls if you hack on it, and it needs a maven
install script so it would be cool if someone set that up.

- James Thornton, http://jamesthornton.com