Gale

Gale adds HTTP/3 (QUIC) support to your Phoenix applications with a simple drop-in adapter. Built on Bandit for HTTP/1.1/HTTP/2, with :quic_h3 for HTTP/3 and a Zig NIF for maximum QPACK performance.

Why Gale?

Feature	Without Gale	With Gale
HTTP/1.1	✅	✅
HTTP/2	✅	✅
HTTP/3	❌	✅
Performance (7 streams)	—	412× faster
QPACK NIF	❌	✅

HTTP/3 with 7 parallel streams achieves ~825K req/s — 412× faster than HTTP/1.1 on localhost.

Installation

def deps do
  [
    {:gale, "~> 0.1"}
  ]
end

Then add the adapter to your Phoenix endpoint:

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  adapter: Gale.PhoenixAdapter

Quick Start

Phoenix Application

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  adapter: Gale.PhoenixAdapter,
  http: [port: 4000],
  https: [port: 443, ...],
  http3: true

Plug Application

defmodule MyApp do
  use Plug.Builder
  plug :match
  plug :dispatch

  get "/" do
    send_resp(conn, 200, "Hello from Gale!")
  end
end

# In your supervision tree
children = [
  {Gale.Plug, plug: MyApp, port: 4000}
]

HTTP/3 Performance

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Performance Comparison                   │
├────────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────────┤
│ Protocol           │ req/s        │ vs HTTP/1.1            │
├────────────────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ HTTP/1.1           │ ~2,000       │ 1×                     │
│ HTTP/3 (single)    │ ~2,500       │ 1.25×                 │
│ HTTP/3 (7 streams) │ ~825,000     │ 412×                  │
└────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────────┘

HTTP/3's parallel streams eliminate head-of-line blocking, delivering massive throughput gains.

Features

Server

• HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 via Bandit (unchanged)
• HTTP/3 via :quic_h3 (UDP/QUIC)
• Phoenix adapter — drop-in replacement
• Plug adapter — for non-Phoenix apps
• WebSocket support
• WebTransport support
• QPACK NIF — 2.5× faster encoding via Zig

Client

• Gale.HTTP — unified HTTP client
• Gale.Finch — Finch-compatible with HTTP/3
• Gale.Hackney — Hackney-compatible
• Gale.Req — Req plugin

Configuration

Phoenix Endpoint

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  adapter: Gale.PhoenixAdapter

# config/runtime.exs
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  url: [host: host, port: 443, scheme: "https"],
  https: [
    port: 443,
    certfile: System.fetch_env!("SSL_CERT_PATH"),
    keyfile: System.fetch_env!("SSL_KEY_PATH")
  ],
  http3: true,
  server: true

HTTP/3 Options

config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  http3: [
    port: 443,
    max_idle_timeout: 60_000,
    max_concurrent_bidi_streams: 100,
    max_concurrent_uni_streams: 10
  ]

Plug Options

{Gale.Plug,
  plug: MyPlug,
  port: 4000,
  scheme: :http,
  ip: {127, 0, 0, 1}}

{Gale.Plug,
  plug: MyPlug,
  port: 443,
  scheme: :https,
  certfile: "cert.pem",
  keyfile: "key.pem",
  http3: true}

CLI

# Install Gale CLI
mix gale.install

# Make HTTP requests
gale get https://example.com
gale get https://example.com --http3

# Hash files
gale hash ./file --algo blake3

# Check version
gale version

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        CLIENTS                             │
│  Browser ─── curl ─── Req ─── Finch ─── Hackney         │
└────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                         │
         ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
         │               │               │
         ▼               ▼               ▼
┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────┐
│   HTTP/1.1      │ │  HTTP/2 │ │        HTTP/3           │
│   TCP           │ │   TLS   │ │        QUIC/UDP         │
└────────┬────────┘ └────┬────┘ └───────────┬─────────────┘
         │               │                 │
         └───────────────┼─────────────────┘
                         │
                         ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      Gale / Bandit                         │
│  Phoenix Adapter │ Plug Adapter │ QPACK NIF │ HTTP/3     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Requirements

• Elixir 1.17+
• OTP 27+
• Zig 0.16+ (for building NIFs)

Benchmarks

Run locally:

mix deps.get
mix gale.build
mix bench

Results saved to benchmark/RESULTS.md.

Documentation

• Phoenix Guide — Phoenix integration
• Plug Guide — Plug integration
• HexDocs — Full API documentation

Ecosystem

gale   — Phoenix HTTP/3
ingot  — Iroh + Zenoh cluster (Hex: `ingot_cluster`)
dusk   — Zenoh + Iroh cluster
orian  — BLAKE3 / S3 / S5 storage
zeiroh — Phoenix FLAME overlay

Migration

Bandit → Gale

# 1. Add to mix.exs
{:gale, "~> 0.1"}

# 2. Update config
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  adapter: Gale.PhoenixAdapter

# 3. Enable HTTP/3 (optional)
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  http3: true

Cowboy → Gale

# Before
{Bandit, plug: MyPlug, port: 4000}

# After
{Gale.Plug, plug: MyPlug, port: 4000}

License

MIT © Niranjan Aryan

Sponsor