Vapor (web framework)

Vapor is an open source web framework written in Swift. It can be used to create RESTful APIs, web apps, and real-time applications using WebSockets. In addition to the core framework, Vapor provides an ORM, a templating language, and packages to facilitate user authentication and authorization.^[4]

Vapor

Developer(s)	Tanner Nelson and others
Initial release	January 18, 2016; 8 years ago (2016-01-18)[1][2]
Stable release	4.102.1[3] / July 10, 2024; 2 months ago (2024-07-10)
Written in	Swift
Operating system	macOS, Ubuntu
Platform	SwiftNIO
Type	Web framework
License	MIT License
Website	vapor.codes

Vapor's source code is hosted on GitHub and licensed under the MIT License.^[5] Vapor has been a part of Swift's Server APIs working group since 2016.^[6][7]

History

Vapor 0.1.0 was released as a proof of concept for Swift on the server a month after Apple open sourced Swift and began Linux platform support on December 3, 2015.^[8] Vapor 1.0^[9] arrived in September 2016, followed by the release of Vapor 2.0 in May 2017.^[10]

The framework was rewritten for Vapor 3.0^[11] to be built on Apple's non-blocking networking framework SwiftNIO. Vapor 3 was released in May 2018. Apple cited the speed with which Vapor (along with Kitura) adopted the new SwiftNIO framework on the main Swift.org server page.^[12]

Vapor 3's beta period saw educational material published by Packt,^[13][14][15] Paul Hudson,^[16] Razeware LLC,^[17] and lynda.com.^[18] Vapor was recognized by Swift.org with an official Swift Forum in its inaugural group of Related Projects^[19] in May 2018.

Vapor 4^[20]'s Alpha 1 Release started in May 2019 and the stable version released in April 2020.^[21]

Releases

Version	Release date	Swift version
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0	Sep 15, 2016	≥ 3.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.0	May 17, 2017	≥ 3.1
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.0	May 4, 2018	≥ 4.1
Current stable version: 4.0	April 9, 2020	≥ 5.2
Future release: 5.0	TBD	≥ TBD

Legend:	Old version, not maintained	Old version, still maintained	Current stable version	Latest preview version	Future release

Source: Vapor Docs & GitHub Releases.^[22][23]

Swift version support

Vapor 4 supports the last 3 minor Swift versions. As of October 27th 2023, this includes Swift 5.7, Swift 5.8 and Swift 5.9.

This meets the standards set out by the Swift Server Workgroup,^[24] of which Vapor is a member^[25]

Features

Vapor supports the following features:^[26]

• Async / non-blocking IO
• Authentication: basic, bearer, JWT, and password
• Cache: Redis and in-memory
• Commands / console formatting
• Content negotiation: JSON, multipart, and URL-encoded form
• Crypto: RNG, ciphers, digests, RSA
• Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control^[27]
• Fluent ORM: MySQL,^[28] PostgreSQL, MongoDB and SQLite
• HTTP client and server
• Leaf templating: HTML etc
• Logging
• URL routing
• Validation
• WebSocket client and server
• Queue jobs

References

1. "Vapor 0.1.0 Release". GitHub. 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
2. "Server-side Swift Frameworks Comparison". Retrieved 2018-05-24.
3. "Vapor 4.102.1 Release". GitHub. 2023-07-10. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
4. "Vapor GitHub Organization". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
5. "vapor/vapor LICENSE at master". GitHub. 2018-02-23. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
6. "Swift Server APIs". 2016-10-25. Archived from the original on 2021-05-10. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
7. "Swift Blog: Server APIs Work Group". 2016-10-25. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
8. "Swift is Open Source". 2015-12-03. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
9. "Vapor 1.0.0 Release". GitHub. 2016-09-15. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
10. "Vapor 2.0.0 Release". GitHub. 2018-05-17. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
11. "Vapor 3.0.0 released". 2018-05-04. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
12. Inc., Apple. "Swift.org". Swift.org. Retrieved 2018-10-04. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
13. Patel, Ankur (2018-03-30). Hands-On Full-Stack Development with Swift. Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1788625241.
14. Yeung, Angus (2018). Hands-On Server-Side Web Development with Swift: Build dynamic web apps by leveraging two popular Swift web frameworks: Vapor 3.0 and Kitura 2.5. Packt Publishing Ltd. ISBN 9781789345865. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
15. Kuepper, Ralph (2020-03-12). Hands-On Swift 5 Microservice Development. Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1789530889.
16. Hudson, Paul (2018-03-01). Server-Side Swift (Vapor ed.).
17. Condon, Tim; et al. Server Side Swift with Vapor. Razeware LLC.
18. "Learning Server-Side Swift with Vapor". Archived from the original on 2021-05-09. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
19. "Introducing Related Projects to Swift Forums". 2018-05-10.
20. VAPOR (2019-05-28). "Vapor 4: Alpha 1 Releases Begin". Medium. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
21. "Release Vapor 4.0.0 · vapor/vapor". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
22. "GitHub: vapor/vapor Releases". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
23. "Vapor Docs: Support". Vapor. Retrieved 2018-05-04.
24. "Swift Server Workgoup".
25. "Swift Server Workgroup Members".
26. "Vapor Docs". docs.vapor.codes. Archived from the original on 2021-07-22. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
27. Elliot, Keith (2016-10-06). Swift 3 New Features. Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1786462718.
28. Hussain, Shaista; et al. (2018-03-12). Proceedings of the 2018 6th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Association for Computing Machinery. ISBN 978-1-4503-6348-8.