Consider deprecating in favour of http-terminator

[gajus]

I have answered a variation of "how to terminate a HTTP server" many times on different Node.js support channels. Unfortunately, I couldn't recommend any of the existing libraries because they are lacking in one or another way (https://github.com/gajus/http-terminator#alternative-libraries). I have since put together a package that (I believe) is handling all the cases expected of graceful HTTP termination.

https://github.com/gajus/http-terminator

I would appreciate if you consider contributing to http-terminator and deprecating stoppable.

[ronkorving]

@gajus Just had a look at http-terminator. It looks good :)

It may be helpful though if you could explicitly list the things that http-terminator does better than stoppable. With all other alternatives combined, you list 6 reasons, but how many of those apply to stoppable?

[gajus]

Compared to stoppable:

• it does not monkey-patch Node.js API (stoppable monkey-patches the Node.js API by adding stop method)
• it immediately destroys all sockets without an attached HTTP request (stoppable does not check if there are attached HTTP requests)
• it allows graceful timeout to sockets with ongoing HTTP requests (stoppable implements one timeout for all socket termination)
• it properly handles HTTPS connections (it seems that stoppable does this)
• it informs connections using keep-alive that server is shutting down by setting a connection: close header (stoppable does not)
• it does not terminate the Node.js process (stoppable does not)

I didn't add a comparison table because some functionality is hard to compare, e.g. stoppable does not implement graceful shutdown just for ongoing requests, but it does have a timeout for all connections. It would be unfair to say that stoppable does not have timeout functionality.

[ronkorving]

Thanks for clarifying. FWIW btw, I'm just a user of stoppable, not the author, so can't provide you with the answer you're looking for. But here's hoping that @hunterloftis will get back to you :)

[maxisam]

@gajus First of all, I think both are great libraries
However, about this one

• it immediately destroys all sockets without an attached HTTP request (stoppable does not check if there are attached HTTP requests)

I think one major different is stoppable tracing all requests

stoppable/lib/stoppable.js

Line 27 in c01a5e2

function onRequest (req, res) {

But in http-terminator you don't do the same thing. You use _httpMessage to determine if there is a request attached. If there is none, you close the socket.

https://github.com/gajus/http-terminator/blob/7a65e2c27694cd566ef99097d7bb15b9ddd3056f/src/factories/createInternalHttpTerminator.ts#L106

however, there is no documentation on _httpMessage.

So I can't really tell which one is better on this point, but I think both library handle this one.

[alexweej]

The fact that stoppable has (at least today) 0 dependencies is a plus for stoppable. http-terminator is bringing in a fair few indirect dependencies that would be a bit of a liability in production.

[titanism]

https://www.npmjs.com/package/lil-http-terminator is better