VaRest: Powering Unreal Projects with Asynchronous, Non-blocking RESTful Requests
VaRest is an exciting open-source project on GitHub, designed with the goal to facilitate asynchronous, non-blocking RESTful requests for Unreal Engine projects. Hosted by ufna, an authoritative voice in the Unreal Engine developer community, VaRest offers an innovative solution to meet the evolving needs of online functionalities in games and interactive applications. It significantly contributes to bridging the gap between Unreal Engine applications and the world of Internet APIs, making it incredibly relevant in today's Internet-centric tech landscape.
Project Overview:
VaRest brings the power of RESTful APIs to Unreal Engine projects by providing a plugin that facilitates working with Internet protocols. At its core, it strives to solve the problem of accessing and manipulating REST APIs directly within Unreal Engine, which is particularly important considering the skyrocketing internet-based features in games and applications.
The primary focus of VaRest is to serve the needs of Unreal Engine developers - ranging from indie game developers to professional development studios wanting to incorporate Internet functionality. It's advantageous for anyone aiming to interact with online databases, multiplayer features, social media integrations, and other web-based services within their Unreal Engine projects.
Project Features:
VaRest deploys a variety of features to enable seamless integration of Restful APIs in Unreal Engine. The project provides JSON (de)serialization, allowing developers to work with one of the most popular data exchange formats. Additionally, it supports both simple and complex GET/POST requests, as well as the entire suite of CRUD operations. The specialty of VaRest lies in executing all these tasks asynchronously, ensuring the primary game thread isn't blocked in the process.
For instance, a game developer could use VaRest to post player high scores to an online leaderboard or retrieve updates from a cloud-based database, all without interrupting the game's primary operations.
Technology Stack:
VaRest is entirely developed using C++, ensuring developers can tap into extreme performance and flexibility while working within the Unreal Engine. Its deep integration with Unreal Engine is due to its implementation as a plugin. Its interoperability stems from its use of JSON parsing and manipulation, making it universally applicable across different RESTful environments.
Project Structure and Architecture:
VaRest's architecture is modular, with its codebase being divided into clear sections based on functionality. The plugin architecture means that integration with Unreal projects is a seamless affair. There is a heavy emphasis on async and non-blocking operations. The project architecture is designed to follow best practices for writing asynchronous code, promoting clean, optimized and effective network-centric functionalities within Unreal Engine projects.
Contribution Guidelines:
