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Lua-Radix-Router is a lightweight high-performance router library written in pure Lua. It's easy to use with only two exported functions, Router.new() and router:match().

The router is optimized for high performance. It combines HashTable(O(1)) and Compressed Trie(or Radix Tree, O(m) where m is the length of path being searched) for efficient matching. Some of the utility functions have the LuaJIT version for better performance, and will automatically switch when running in LuaJIT. It also scales well even with long paths and a large number of routes.

The router can be run in different runtimes such as Lua, LuaJIT, or OpenResty.

Patterned path: You can define named or unnamed patterns in path with pattern syntax "{}" and "{*}"

• named variables: /users/{id}/profile-{year}.{format}, matches with /users/1/profile-2024.html.
• named prefix: /api/authn/{*path}, matches with /api/authn/foo and /api/authn/foo/bar.

Variable binding: Stop manually parsing the URL, let the router injects the binding variables for you.

Best performance: The fastest router in Lua/LuaJIT and open-source API Gateways. See Benchmarks and Routing Benchmark in different API Gateways.

OpenAPI friendly: OpenAPI(Swagger) is fully compatible.

Trailing slash match: You can make the Router to ignore the trailing slash by setting trailing_slash_match to true. For example, /foo/ to match the existing /foo, /foo to match the existing /foo/.

Custom Matcher: The router has two efficient matchers built in, MethodMatcher(method) and HostMatcher(host). They can be disabled via opts.matcher_names. You can also add your custom matchers via opts.matchers. For example, an IpMatcher to evaluate whether the ctx.ip is matched with the ips of a route.

Regex pattern: You can define regex pattern in variables. a variable without regex pattern is treated as [^/]+.

• /users/{uuid:[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}}
• /users/{id:\\d+}/profile-{year:\\d{4}}.{format:(html|pdf)}

Features in the roadmap:

• Expression condition: defines custom matching conditions by using expression language.

Install radix-router via LuaRocks:

luarocks install radix-router

Or from source

make install

Get started by an example:

local Router = require "radix-router"
local router, err = Router.new({
  { -- static path
    paths = { "/foo", "/foo/bar", "/html/index.html" },
    handler = "1" -- handler can be any non-nil value. (e.g. boolean, table, function)
  },
  { -- variable path
    paths = { "/users/{id}/profile-{year}.{format}" },
    handler = "2"
  },
  { -- prefix path
    paths = { "/api/authn/{*path}" },
    handler = "3"
  },
  { -- methods condition
    paths = { "/users/{id}" },
    methods = { "POST" },
    handler = "4"
  }
})
if not router then
  error("failed to create router: " .. err)
end

assert("1" == router:match("/html/index.html"))
assert("2" == router:match("/users/100/profile-2023.pdf"))
assert("3" == router:match("/api/authn/token/genreate"))
assert("4" == router:match("/users/100", { method = "POST" }))

-- variable binding
local params = {}
router:match("/users/100/profile-2023.pdf", nil, params)
assert(params.year == "2023")
assert(params.format == "pdf")

For more usage samples, please refer to the /examples directory. For more use cases, please check out lua-radix-router-use-cases.

Creates a radix router instance.

local router, err = Router.new(routes, opts)

Parameters

• routes (table|nil): the array-like Route table.

• opts (table|nil): the object-like Options table.

  The available options are as follow

  NAME	TYPE	DEFAULT	DESCRIPTION
  trailing_slash_match	boolean	false	whether to enable the trailing slash match behavior
  matcher_names	table	{"method","host"}	enabled built-in macher list
  matchers	table	{ }	custom matcher list

Route defines the matching conditions for its handler.

Return the handler of a matched route that matches the path and condition ctx.

local handler = router:match(path, ctx, params, matched)

Parameters

• path(string): the path to use for matching.
• ctx(table|nil): the optional condition ctx to use for matching.
• params(table|nil): the optional table to use for storing the parameters binding result.
• matched(table|nil): the optional table to use for storing the matched conditions.

Using regex to define the pattern of a variable. Note that at most one URL segment is evaluated when matching a variable's pattern, which means it's not allowed to define a pattern crossing multiple URL segments, for example, {var:[/0-9a-z]+}.

local Router = require "radix-router"
local router = Router.new({
  {
    paths = { "/users/{id:\\d+}/profile-{year:\\d{4}}.{format:(html|pdf)}" },
    handler = "1"
  },
  {
    paths = { "/users/{uuid:[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}}" },
    handler = "2"
  },
})
assert("1" == router:match("/users/100/profile-2024.pdf"))
assert("2" == router:match("/users/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"))

Inside the Router, it has a hash-like table to optimize the static path matching. Due to the LuaJIT optimization, static path matching is the fastest and has lower memory usage. (see Benchmarks)

The Router also has a tree structure for patterned path matching. The tree is basically a compact prefix tree (or Radix Tree). The primary structure of Router is as follows:

{
  static<Table>   = {},
  trie<TrieNode>  = TrieNode.new(),
  ...
}

+--------+----------+------------------------------------+
| FIELD  |   TYPE   |                DESC                |
+--------+----------+------------------------------------+
| static | table    | a hash-like table for static paths |
| trie   | TrieNode | a radix tree for pattern paths     |
+--------+----------+------------------------------------+

TrieNode is an array-like table. Compared with the hash-like, it reduces memory usage by 20%. The data structure of TrieNode is:

{ <type>, <path>, <pathn>, <children>, <value> }

+-------+----------+------------------+
| INDEX |   NAME   |       TYPE       |
+-------+----------+------------------+
|     1 | type     | integer          |
|     2 | path     | string           |
|     3 | pathn    | integer          |
|     4 | children | hash-like table  |
|     5 | value    | array-like table |
+-------+----------+------------------+

Nodes with a common prefix share a common parent. Here is an example of what a Router with three routes could look like:

local router = Router.new({
  { -- <table 1>
    paths = { "/api/login" },
    handler = "1",
  }, { -- <table 2>
    paths = { "/people/{id}/profile" },
    handler = "2",
  }, { -- <table 3>
    paths = { "/search/{query}", "/src/{*filename}" },
    handler = "3"
  }
})

router.static = {
  [/api/login] = { *<table 1> }
}

              TrieNode.path       TrieNode.value
router.trie = /                   nil
              ├─people/           nil
              │ └─{wildcard}      nil
              │   └─/profile      { "/people/{id}/profile",  *<table 2> }
              └─s                 nil
               ├─earch/           nil
               │ └─{wildcard}     { "/search/{query}",       *<table 3> }
               └─rc/              nil
                 └─{catchall}     { "/src/{*filename}",      *<table 3> }

To run the benchmark

$ make install
$ make bench

• Apple MacBook Pro(M1 Pro), 32GB
• LuaJIT 2.1.1700008891

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=10000000 luajit benchmark/static-paths.lua
========== static path ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	10000000
elapsed :	0.171333 s
QPS     :	58365872
ns/op   :	0.0171333 ns
path    :	/50000
handler :	50000
Memory  :	48.69 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=10000000 luajit benchmark/simple-variable.lua
========== variable ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	10000000
elapsed :	0.844033 s
QPS     :	11847877
ns/op   :	0.0844033 ns
path    :	/1/foo
handler :	1
Memory  :	99.97 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=1000000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=10000000 luajit benchmark/simple-variable.lua
========== variable ==========
routes  :	1000000
times   :	10000000
elapsed :	0.870953 s
QPS     :	11481675
ns/op   :	0.0870953 ns
path    :	/1/foo
handler :	1
Memory  :	1000.41 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=10000000 luajit benchmark/simple-prefix.lua
========== prefix ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	10000000
elapsed :	0.730344 s
QPS     :	13692177
ns/op   :	0.0730344 ns
path    :	/1/a
handler :	1
Memory  :	99.92 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=1000000 luajit benchmark/simple-regex.lua
========== regex ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	1000000
elapsed :	0.14444 s
QPS     :	6923289
ns/op   :	0.14444 ns
path    :	/1/a
handler :	1
Memory  :	126.64 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=1000000 luajit benchmark/complex-variable.lua
========== variable ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	1000000
elapsed :	0.858975 s
QPS     :	1164178
ns/op   :	0.858975 ns
path    :	/aa/bb/cc/dd/ee/ff/gg/hh/ii/jj/kk/ll/mm/nn/oo/pp/qq/rr/ss/tt/uu/vv/ww/xx/yy/zz50000
handler :	50000
Memory  :	140.08 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_ROUTES=100000 RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=10000000 luajit benchmark/simple-variable-binding.lua
========== variable ==========
routes  :	100000
times   :	10000000
elapsed :	1.843245 s
QPS     :	5425214
ns/op   :	0.1843245 ns
path    :	/1/foo
handler :	1
params : name = foo
Memory  :	99.94 MB

RADIX_ROUTER_TIMES=1000000 luajit benchmark/github-routes.lua
========== github apis ==========
routes  :	609
times   :	1000000
elapsed :	0.38436 s
QPS     :	2601727
ns/op   :	0.38436 ns
path    :	/repos/vm-001/lua-radix-router/import
handler :	/repos/{owner}/{repo}/import
Memory  :	2.69 MB

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Copyright (c) 2024, Yusheng Li