Introducing Spin

Spin is a framework for building and running event-driven microservice applications with WebAssembly (Wasm) components. With Spin, we’re trying to make it easier to get started with using WebAssembly on the server so that we can all take advantage of the security, portability, and speed WebAssembly provides when it comes to running microservices.

Install Spin

Structure of a Spin Application

1. A Spin application manifest (spin.toml) file which defines where your WebAssembly components live and what triggers them.
2. One or more WebAssembly components.

Spin executes the component(s) as a result of events being generated by the trigger(s) defined in the spin.toml file.

Example Spin Application

The following illustrates how to define an HTTP application.

HTTP Handler

This hello_world function written in Rust defines a component that takes a Request and returns a Result<Response>.

#[http_component]​
fn hello_world(_req: Request) -> Result<Response> {​
    Ok(http::Response::builder()​
        .status(200)​
        .body(Some("Hello, Fermyon!".into()))?)​
}​

Spin Manifest

Once the code is compiled to a WebAssembly component, it can be referenced in a spin.toml file to create an HTTP application like what you can see below:

spin_version = "1"
name = "spin-hello-world"
trigger = { type = "http", base = "/" }
version = "1.0.0"

[[component]]
id = "hello"
source = "<path to compiled Wasm module>"
[component.trigger]
route = "/hello"

Running a Spin Application

Running this application with the spin CLI is as simple as using the spin up command. Because a trigger type of http is specified in the spin.toml file, spin up will start a web server:

$ spin up
Serving HTTP on address http://127.0.0.1:3000
Available Routes:
  hello: http://127.0.0.1:3000/hello

Any time a request is made on the /hello route, it will invoke the hello_world function. Adding another component is as simple as adding another [[component]] stanza to the spin.toml file.

Deploying a Spin application

Spin applications can be deployed to the fully managed Fermyon Cloud, or using the self-hosted Fermyon Platform

Next Steps

• Install Spin
• Take Spin for a spin
• Learn about the Fermyon Cloud