fp-bindgen

Bindings generator for full-stack WASM plugins.

Comparison to other "bindgen" tools

fp-bindgen is not the only tool for generating Wasm bindings. The most well-known tool for this is probably wasm-bindgen, though it is limited to Rust modules running inside browser environments. A more generic alternative, based on the Wasm interface types proposal, is wit-bindgen. We do believe interface types to be the future of Wasm bindings, but for the short-term, fp-bindgen provides bindings that work with a stable serialization format, which helps us to avoid versioning issues and opens up compatibility with tools such as Serde.

It is worth mentioning that, though we have a specification for our communication primitives that allows generators for other languages to be contributed, fp-bindgen is opinionated towards Rust. It uses Rust data structures and function signatures as its "protocol format", enabling tight integration with existing crates from the Rust ecosystem.

The following table is intended to highlight the major differences between the different tools:

Feature	fp-bindgen	wasm-bindgen	wit-bindgen
Host environments	Rust (Wasmer), TypeScript*	JS/TS	Rust/Python (Wasmtime), JS/TS*
Guest languages	Rust*	Rust	Rust, C*
Protocol format	Rust (using macros)	N/A	.wit
Serialization format	MessagePack	JSON	Custom
Can use existing Rust types	✅	❌	❌

*) These are only the currently supported options. More may be added in the future.

Usage

Using fp-bindgen is a three-step process:

• First you define a protocol that specifies the functions and data structures available for communication across the Wasm bridge.
• Then you generate the bindings for the hosts and plugin language that are relevant to you.
• Finally, you can start implementing plugins and runtimes using the generated bindings.

Defining a protocol

Before you can generate bindings using this library, you first define a protocol of functions that can be called by the runtime (the Wasm host) and functions that can be called by the plugin (the Wasm guest module). The protocol specifies the function declarations, which are placed inside two macros: fp_import! and fp_export!. These macros specify which functions can be imported and which can be exported, from the perspective of the plugin. In other words, fp_import! functions can be called by the plugin and must be implemented by the runtime, while fp_export! functions can be called by the runtime and may be implemented by the plugin.

Example:

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_import! {
    fn my_imported_function(a: u32, b: u32) -> u32;
}

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_export! {
    fn my_exported_function(a: u32, b: u32) -> u32;
}

Important caveat: There must be exactly one fp_import! block and one fp_export! block in the same module as where you invoke fp_bindgen!(). If you only have imports, or only have exports, you should create an empty block for the other.

Data structures

Besides primitives, functions can pass Rust structs and enums as their arguments and return value, but only by value (passing a reference across the Wasm bridge is currently not supported) and only for types that implement Serializable.

Example:

#[derive(fp_bindgen::prelude::Serializable)]
pub struct MyStruct {
    pub foo: i32,
    pub bar: String,
}

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_import! {
    fn my_function(data: MyStruct) -> MyStruct;
}

Note that Serializable is implemented by default for some common standard types, such as Option, Vec, and other container types.

Async functions

Functions can also be async, which works as you would expect:

Example:

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_import! {
    async fn my_async_function(data: MyStruct) -> Result<MyStruct, MyError>;
}

Using existing Rust types

Sometimes you may wish to use Rust types for your protocol that you also want to use directly in the generated runtime or plugin implementation. In such a case, generation of the data types might force you to perform unnecessary copies, so we allow explicit annotations to import the existing definition instead of generating a new one:

Example:

use fp_bindgen::prelude::Serializable;

#[derive(Serializable)]
#[fp(rust_wasmer_runtime_module = "my_crate::prelude")]
pub struct MyStruct {
    pub foo: i32,
    pub bar_qux: String,
}

In this example, MyStruct has a double function: it acts both as a type definition for the protocol (through fp-bindgen's Serializable trait), which can still be used for generating a TypeScript type definition, for instance. And it acts as a type that can be directly used by the Rust Wasmer runtime, under the assumption the runtime can import it from my_crate::prelude.

Please note that in this case, you do have a bigger responsibility to make sure the definition fulfills the requirements of the code generator, hence why Serde's trait derives and annotations have to be added manually here, in accordance with how the generator would otherwise generate them.

For now, this feature is limited to the Rust generators through either the rust_wasmer_runtime_module or rust_plugin_module annotations. For us, this makes sense given the protocol itself is specified using Rust syntax as well. If desired, we could extend this to the TypeScript generator as well, though that would imply an even bigger responsibility for the user to keep their TypeScript types in sync with the protocol.

Cargo features

The fp-bindgen crate supports optional Cargo features for compatibility with some common types from the crate ecosystem:

• http-compat: Enables compatibility with types from the http crate.
• serde-bytes-compat: Enables compatibility with serde_bytes's ByteBuf type (the Bytes type is a reference type, which fp-bindgen doesn't support in general).
• time-compat: Enables compatibility with time's PrimitiveDateTime and OffsetDateTime types.

Generating bindings

To generate bindings based on your protocol, you first need to create a function that will generate them for you. Creating this function is easy, because its implementation can be created for you using the fp_bindgen macro:

let bindings_type = fp_bindgen::BindingsType::RustWasmerRuntime;

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_bindgen!(fp_bindgen::BindingConfig {
    bindings_type,
    path: &format!("bindings/{}", bindings_type)
});

Currently, we support the following binding types:

• BindingsType::RustPlugin: Generates bindings for a Rust plugin.
• BindingsType::RustWasmerRuntime: Generates runtime bindings for use with Wasmer.
• BindingsType::TsRuntime: Generates bindings for a TypeScript runtime.

Note that some binding types take an additional config argument.

Using the bindings

How to use the generated bindings differs between the various types.

Using the Rust plugin bindings

The generator for our Rust plugin bindings generates a complete crate that allows to be linked against by plugins. The plugin can import all the functions from the fp_import! block from it, and call them like any other functions.

In order to export the functions that are defined in the fp_export! block, it can use the exported fp_export_impl macro, like so:

#[fp_bindgen_macros::fp_export_impl(bindings_crate_path)]
fn my_exported_function(a: u32, b: u32) -> u32 {
    /* ... */
}

bindings_crate_path is expected to match with the module path from which the bindings crate itself is imported. The function signature must match exactly with one of the fp_export! functions.

When compiling a plugin, don't forget to compile against the "wasm32-unknown-unknown" target, or you will receive linker errors.

See the example-plugin/ directory for an example of a plugin that uses bindings generated from our example-protocol/ (do note this plugin only builds after you've run cargo run inside the example-protocol/ directory).

Using the Rust Wasmer runtime bindings

The generator for our Rust Wasmer runtime works a bit differently. Instead of generating a crate, it generates two files: bindings.rs and types.rs. These can be placed in a module of your choosing (we chose a module named spec in the example-rust-runtime/).

As the implementor of the runtime, it is then your responsibility to implement the fp_import! functions within the same module as you've placed the generated files. You can see an example of this in example-rust-runtime/spec/mod.rs (do note the example runtime only builds after you've run cargo run inside the example-protocol/ directory).

Finally, the bindings.rs file contains a constructor (Runtime::new()) that you can use to instantiate Wasmer runtimes with the Wasm module provided as a blob. The fp_export! functions are provided on the Runtime instance as methods. Please be aware that implementation of the fp_export! functions is always at the discretion of the plugin, and an attempt to invoke a missing implementation can fail with an InvocationError::FunctionNotExported error.

Using the TypeScript runtime bindings

The TypeScript runtime generator can work with browsers, Node.js and Deno.

It works similarly to that for the Wasmer runtime, but it generates an index.ts and a types.ts. types.ts contains the type definitions for all the data structures, while the index.ts exports a createRuntime() function that you can use for instantiating the runtime. Upon instantiation, you are expected to provide implementations for all the fp_import! functions, while the returned Promise will give you an object with all the fp_export! functions the provided plugin has implemented.

Examples

Please have a look at examples/README.md for various examples on how to use fp-bindgen.

Specification

We have written down a specification that describes the primitives used by our bindings. This is aimed primarily at those that want to understand how the bindings work under the hood, and may be valuable if you want to implement bindings for your own favorite language.

If that is you, please have a look at docs/SPEC.md.

Known Limitations

• Data types may only contain value types. References are currently unsupported.
• Referencing types using their full module path is prone to cause mismatches during type discovery. Please import types using a use statement and refer to them by their name only.
• TypeScript bindings handle 64-bit integers somewhat inconsistently. When passed as primitives (as plain function arguments or return values) they will be encoded using the BigInt type. But when they're part of a MessagePack-encoded data type, they will be encoded using number, which effectively limits them to a maximum size of 2^53 - 1. For more information, see: msgpack/msgpack-javascript#115

FAQ

I added a Serializable derive to my type, why don't I see it included in the bindings?

Are you using the type in one of the fp_import! or fp_export! functions? Deriving Serializable makes it possible to use the type as part of your protocol, but it won't become part of the generated bindings until it is actually referenced. Note that types can be either referenced directly by one of the fp_import! or fp_export! functions, or indirectly by another type that is already in use.

If a type is not referenced either directly or indirectly by any of the functions that are part of your protocol, you can force inclusion by adding a use statement referencing the type to either the fp_import! or fp_export! section:

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_import! {
    use MyType;
}

Are you referencing the type and it is still not included in your bindings? Please file an issue.

Can I use aliases?

Yes, but because aliases cannot have a derive macro, please repeat the alias in either the fp_import! or fp_export! section:

fp_bindgen::prelude::fp_import! {
  type MyType = SomeOtherType;
}

What about versioning?

Generally, versioning is considered out-of-scope for this project. This means it is your own responsibility to verify a plugin you execute was compiled against a compatible version of the protocol your runtime provides.

If your protocol ever needs to introduce breaking changes, we advise to include a version() -> u32 export function in the protocol itself that you can call before invoking any other functions.

As for what constitutes a breaking change, we offer the following guidelines:

• All plugin exports are always optional. Because of this, new exports can always be added without breaking existing plugins, unless your runtime performs an explicit check that mandates an export's existence.
• Adding new imports is always safe, as they will simply be ignored by existing plugins.
• Adding fields to structs is always safe, unless your runtime mandates the existence of such fields in arguments or return values coming from the plugin.
• Adding new types is always safe.
• Anything else should be considered a breaking change.

Note that, because of the above guidelines, you should never need to define a versioning function in your first iteration. Because plugin exports are optional, the absense of a versioning function can simply be interpreted as meaning the plugin is at version 1.

Community

Do you want help using fp-bindgen? Want to discuss new features?

Please come visit us in the #fp-bindgen channel on our Discord.

Contributing

Please follow our Contributing Guidelines to learn how best to contribute to this project.

License

This project is licensed under Apache License, version 2.0 (LICENSE.txt).