Jun 11, 2022

Write WebAssembly in Swift and use it in Swift App

Background

I've been developing a new app for a while, one of the coolest ideas is to let the user write their own script to extend the app's ability.

But what kind of scripting language should I support? Why not support them all? So the decision is to adapt WebAssembly which grants the user's flavor.

What's more, We will also use Swift to write wasm thanks to the great SwiftWasm project.

Communication

WebAssembly was designed to be a 32-bit sandbox VM, it's safe and isolated from our 64-bit Swift host app.

The only way to communicate with each other is to copy memory from the host app into the VM and read the processed memory from VM back later.

This's a big challenge, but we will overcome it step by step.

Reference

If you are not quite familiar with Swift pointer & memory layout, check out these talks.

Exploring Swift Memory Layout Size, Stride, Alignment Unsafe Swift: Using Pointers and Interacting With C

Setup SwiftWasm

1. Install swiftenv

We will use swiftenv to manage the toolchain, So please install it first.

2. Install swiftwasm

Since swiftwasm has not been merged into the repo, we gonna install it on our own.

Here is the Github release page of the toolchain.

3. Set swift env in project

Use swiftenv to check the version of your swiftwasm

swiftenv versions

Mine is wasm-5.6.0 at the time, so at the root of your project folder, run swiftenv local wasm-5.6.0 to set the project level swift env.

Basic WebAssembly App

Finished project can be found here https://github.com/kevinzhow/write-wasm-in-swift-demo

As we know before, the Host app can only communicate with WebAssembly VM through memory copy, with the help of protobuf, we can transport data between 32-bit wasm VM and 64-bit host app easily.

But we also need to implement a few functions to handle these.

allocate memory with size and return memory pointer
deallocate memory at the pointer
function to do the real work with memory address and size.

Quick look

import Foundation

@_cdecl("allocate")
func allocate(size: Int) -> UnsafeMutableRawPointer {
  return UnsafeMutableRawPointer.allocate(byteCount: size, alignment: MemoryLayout<UInt8>.alignment)
}
@_cdecl("deallocate")
func deallocate(pointer: UnsafeMutableRawPointer) {
  pointer.deallocate()
}

@_cdecl("change_article_proto")
func changeBookProto(protoData: UnsafeMutableRawPointer,  size: Int,  newAuthor: UnsafeRawPointer, authorSize: Int, newSize: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int>) -> UnsafeRawPointer {
    // Decode proto binary data
    let data = Data(bytes: protoData, count: size)
    var book = try! BookInfo(serializedData: data)

    // Change author
    book.author =  String(data: Data(bytes: newAuthor, count: authorSize), encoding: .utf8)!

    let newData = try! book.serializedData()
    newSize.pointee = newData.count

    // get the data pointer of the new book proto data
    let pointer = newData.withUnsafeBytes{ (bufferRawBufferPointer) -> UnsafeRawPointer in

        let bufferPointer: UnsafePointer<UInt8> = bufferRawBufferPointer.baseAddress!.assumingMemoryBound(to: UInt8.self)
        return UnsafeRawPointer(bufferPointer)
    }

    return pointer
}

Now we can build our wasm with command

swift build --triple wasm32-unknown-wasi  -c release -Xlinker --allow-undefined

We pass --allow-undefined to make sure all @_cdecl functions will be exported.

Then copy it out

cp .build/release/swiftwasm.wasm ./swiftwasm.wasm

Swift Host App

Finished Project can be found here https://github.com/kevinzhow/swiftwasm-host-app-demo

First, we implement a Wasm Module to handle the memory exchange and method call.

import Foundation
import WasmInterpreter
import SwiftProtobuf

public struct WasmModule {
    private let _vm: WasmInterpreter

    init() throws {
        _vm = try WasmInterpreter(module: Bundle.module.url(forResource: "swiftwasm", withExtension: "wasm")!)
    }

    /// Allocate memory on heap
    /// It returns byteoffset
    func allocate(size: Int) throws -> Int {
        return Int(try _vm.call("allocate", Int32(size)) as Int32)
    }
    
    func deallocate(byteOffset: Int) throws {
        try _vm.call("deallocate", Int32(byteOffset))
    }
    
    /// Allocate size on heap
    /// It returns byteoffset
    func allocateSize() throws -> Int {
        
        let length = MemoryLayout<Int32>.size
        
        let newSizePointer = try! allocate(size: length)
        
        return newSizePointer
    }
    
    /// Write string to heap
    /// It returns byteoffset
    func writeString(string: String) throws -> (Int, Int) {
        
        let length = Data(string.utf8).count
        
        let pointer = try! allocate(size: length)
        
        try _vm.writeToHeap(string: string, byteOffset: pointer)
        
        return (pointer, length)
    }
    
    /// Write Data to heap
    /// It returns byteoffset
    func writeData(data: Data) throws -> Int {
        
        let length = data.count
        
        let pointer = try! allocate(size: length)
        
        try _vm.writeToHeap(data: data, byteOffset: pointer)

        return pointer
    }

    /// Send Protobuf binary into
    func changeBook(_ book: BookInfo, author: String) throws -> BookInfo {
         let data = try! book.serializedData()
        
        let (newAuthorPtr, newAuthorSize) = try! writeString(string: author)
        
        let newSizePointer = try! allocateSize()
        
        let dataPointer = try writeData(data: data)
        
        let newArticlePointer = Int(try _vm.call("change_article_proto",
                                                 Int32(dataPointer),
                                                 Int32(data.count),
                                                 Int32(newAuthorPtr),
                                                 Int32(newAuthorSize),
                                                 Int32(newSizePointer)) as Int32)
        
        let newSizeValue = Int(try _vm.valueFromHeap(byteOffset: newSizePointer) as Int32)
        
        let newData = try _vm.dataFromHeap(byteOffset: newArticlePointer, length: newSizeValue)
        
        let newBook = try! BookInfo(serializedData: newData)
        
        try! deallocate(byteOffset: newAuthorPtr)
        try! deallocate(byteOffset: newSizePointer)
        try! deallocate(byteOffset: dataPointer)
        try! deallocate(byteOffset: newArticlePointer)
        
        return newBook
    }
}

Finally, we can use it.

main.swift

import WasmInterpreter
print("Hello, world!")

let module = try! WasmModule()
var book = BookInfo()
book.id = 1
book.author = "Apple"
book.title = "Swift Programming"
let newBook = try! module.changeBook(book, author: "Apple Stuff")
print(newBook.author)