Expose a public API for getting NatsHeaders in the byte array (serialization)

[Farrukhjon]

Proposed change

Such kind of methods :

• public byte[] NatsHeaders.SerializeToArray() or public byte[] NatsHeaders.GetSerialized() - Returns the byte array in a serialized version (ASCII or any other encoding).
  • public int SerializedLength() - Returns the number of bytes in a serialized version (ASCII or any other encoding).

Use case

Need to calculate/take into account NatsHeaders size (length in bytes) up front to call Publish for large Nats message which exceeds payload size against server's maximum payload size.

Contribution

No response

[mtmk]

we can open HeaderWriter that's what we're using internally https://github.com/nats-io/nats.net/blob/d7b6baa7600dcaaeaad2a4de247b3740e5d44aef/src/NATS.Client.Core/Internal/HeaderWriter.cs#L8

example usage: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.net/blob/c84f216316b025e2c8ce3398d9a9b7d3fb60fd16/tests/NATS.Client.CoreUnit.Tests/NatsHeaderTest.cs#L40-L43

[Farrukhjon]

I want to publish a message with data (payload) size close to the ServerInfo.MaxPayload. I thought if I take the message headers size into account for the data size as overhead, then I'll be able to publish the message to NATS Server.

But the publish fails with NATS.Client.Core.NatsException: Payload size 1398091 exceeds server's maximum payload size 1048576 error.

The headers size is calculated with:

https://github.com/nats-io/nats.net/blob/a16344561dde584e2621b6972b7be5b9c4e84a26/tests/NATS.Client.Core.Tests/NatsHeaderTest.cs#L40-L44

I based my assumption on these lines:

https://github.com/nats-io/nats.net/blob/a16344561dde584e2621b6972b7be5b9c4e84a26/src/NATS.Client.Core/Commands/CommandWriter.cs#L288-L292

This is the test:

[Fact(DisplayName = "Test no NatsException is thrown when headers size took into account as payload overhead for publishing message with MaxPayload")]
    public async Task TestNoMaxPayloadExceedsNatsExceptionIsThrown()
    {
        // Given
        var headers = new NatsHeaders() { ["foo"] = new StringValues(["bar1", "bar2", "bar3"]) };
        var natsHeadersUtil = new NatsHeadersUtil(Encoding.UTF8);
        var headersSizeInBytes = (int)natsHeadersUtil.NatsHeadersSizeInBytes(headers);
        var connection = await _natsServerContainer.GetOrCreateNatsConnectionAsync();
        var serverInfo = connection.ServerInfo ?? throw new ArgumentException("ServerInfo is null!");
        var maxPayloadSize = serverInfo.MaxPayload;
        var maxAllowedPayload = this._stringRandomizer.GenerateRandomStringInBytes(maxPayloadSize - headersSizeInBytes);

        Assert.True(maxAllowedPayload.Length < maxPayloadSize);
        Assert.Equal(maxPayloadSize - headersSizeInBytes, maxAllowedPayload.Length);
        Assert.Equal(45, headersSizeInBytes);

        // When a message with the max allowed payload is published.
        var exception = await Record.ExceptionAsync(
            async () => await connection.PublishAsync("test.subject", maxAllowedPayload, headers)
        );
        // Then no exception is thrown.
        Assert.Null(exception);
    }

And this is implementation of the NatsHeadersSizeInBytes method:

public class NatsHeadersUtil(Encoding encoding)
{
    private readonly Encoding _encoding = encoding;

    public long NatsHeadersSizeInBytes(NatsHeaders headers)
    {
        var pipe = new Pipe(new PipeOptions(pauseWriterThreshold: 0));
        var writer = new HeaderWriter(_encoding);
        var headerSizeInBytes = writer.Write(pipe.Writer, headers);
        return headerSizeInBytes;
    }

}

Stack trace of the failure

Assert.Null() Failure: Value is not null
Expected: null
Actual:   NATS.Client.Core.NatsException: Payload size 1398091 exceeds server's maximum payload size 1048576
   at NATS.Client.Core.Commands.CommandWriter.PublishAsync[T](String subject, T value, NatsHeaders headers, String replyTo, INatsSerialize`1 serializer, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
   at NATS.Client.Core.NatsConnection.PublishAsync[T](String subject, T data, NatsHeaders headers, String replyTo, INatsSerialize`1 serializer, NatsPubOpts opts, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
--- End of stack trace from previous location ---

I just curious, how such much exceeding number of bytes (1398091-1048576 = 349515) is computed?

Note: I made available accessibility of HeaderWriter class for this test.

This is dev environment:

dotnet --info
.NET SDK:
 Version:           8.0.401
 Commit:            811edcc344
 Workload version:  8.0.400-manifests.f51a3a6b
 MSBuild version:   17.11.4+37eb419ad

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Mac OS X
 OS Version:  14.6
 OS Platform: Darwin
 RID:         osx-x64

[mtmk]

thanks for the code. I wonder in your example maxAllowedPayload is much larger because of string encoding?

This is what I was able to try, it worked as expected for me:

using System.Text;
using NATS.Client.Core;
using NATS.Client.Core.Internal;

var nc = new NatsConnection();
await nc.ConnectAsync();
var max = nc.ServerInfo!.MaxPayload;

var headers = new NatsHeaders { { "key1", "value1" }, { "key2", "value2" } };
var buffer = new NatsBufferWriter<byte>();
var headersLength = new HeaderWriter(Encoding.ASCII).Write(buffer, headers);
var payloadLength = max - headersLength;

Console.WriteLine($"headers length: {headersLength}");
Console.WriteLine($"payload length: {payloadLength}");
Console.WriteLine($"    server max: {max}");

await nc.PublishAsync("foo", new byte[payloadLength], headers: headers);
Console.WriteLine("OK");

try
{
    await nc.PublishAsync("foo", new byte[payloadLength + 1], headers: headers);
    Console.WriteLine("OK");
}
catch (NatsException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}

// Output:
// headers length: 40
// payload length: 1048536
//     server max: 1048576
// OK
// Payload size 1048577 exceeds server's maximum payload size 1048576

running against server with no config:

$ nats-server

[Farrukhjon]

maxAllowedPayload

The generated maxAllowedPayload is actually small to the headersSizeInBytes amount.

It's assured here:

Assert.True(maxAllowedPayload.Length < maxPayloadSize);
Assert.Equal(maxPayloadSize - headersSizeInBytes, maxAllowedPayload.Length);

Using the same encoding for the payload and the headers (ASCII) resulted to the same error:

var encoding = Encoding.ASCII;
var natsHeadersUtil = new NatsHeadersUtil(encoding);
var headersSizeInBytes = (int)natsHeadersUtil.NatsHeadersSizeInBytes(headers);
var connection = await _natsServerContainer.GetOrCreateNatsConnectionAsync();
var serverInfo = connection.ServerInfo ?? throw new ArgumentException("ServerInfo is null!");
var maxPayloadSize = serverInfo.MaxPayload;
var maxAllowedPayload = this._stringRandomizer.GenerateRandomStringInBytes(maxPayloadSize - headersSizeInBytes, encoding);

[mtmk]

what is the type of maxAllowedPayload? it's not possible for me reproduce the issue with the code above not knowing the dependencies. Are you able to create a minimal console app and post Program.cs?

[Farrukhjon]

The much exceeding number of bytes in payload issue was in serialization put in connection NatsOpts

var natsOpts = NatsOpts.Default with
{
    SerializerRegistry = NatsJsonSerializerRegistry.Default
};
var nc = new NatsConnection(natsOpts);

I was mislead with such behavior. My other tests which have mix of publishing objects and small texts were fine. But when I wanted to examine maxPayload - headers overhead I faced with this issue.

So, below code reproduces the issue.

var natsOpts = NatsOpts.Default with
{
    SerializerRegistry = NatsJsonSerializerRegistry.Default
};
var nc = new NatsConnection(natsOpts);

await nc.PublishAsync("foo", Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("Hello World"), headers: headers);
Console.WriteLine("Small text in ASCII bytes is ok");

try
{
    var maxPayload = new byte[payloadLength];
    Array.Fill(maxPayload, (byte)'A');
    await nc.PublishAsync("foo", maxPayload, headers: headers);
    Console.WriteLine("OK");
}
catch (NatsException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Max size text in ASCII bytes is not ok");
    Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}

Output: Small text in ASCII bytes is ok Max size text in ASCII bytes is not ok Payload size 1398090 exceeds server's maximum payload size 1048576

P.S: we still need that HeaderWriter be publicly available to use.