Replacing reqwest crate with async_minreq crate #128

psg-19 · 2025-06-08T14:59:20Z

Addresses #121

Overview

This PR replaces our reqwest-based async client with a lightweight async-minreq fork. All existing unit tests pass, but because async-minreq pulls in Tokio 1.44.0 and Tokio-rustls 0.26.2, the project’s MSRV must be bumped to 1.71.0 in CI.

Changes

Dependency swap
- Removed reqwest (and its feature flags)
- Added
  async_minreq = { git = "https://github.com/psg-19/async-minreq" }
Async client rewrite
- Updated async.rs to use the async-minreq API for GET/POST, timeouts, retries, and HTTPS.
Tests & MSRV
- Verified unit tests pass on Rust 1.71.0.
- CI workflows now declare rust-version = "1.71.0" to match Tokio’s MSRV.

Issues with my Implementation

The async-minreq crate currently fails to compile (on rust version 1.71) without my recursion fix.
The async_minreq crate lacks some async features.

CI tests can be viewed here, on 1.71.0 MSRV
Looking forward to feedback on these changes and any suggestions for improvement!

Checklists

All Submissions:

I’ve signed all my commits
I followed the contribution guidelines
I ran cargo fmt and cargo clippy before committing

New Features:

I’ve added tests for the new feature
I’ve added docs for the new feature

…ausing failure to some tests.

tnull

This is a pretty substantial change that also breaks compatibility between rust-esplora-client versions. That said, I really like the idea of eventually getting rid of the huge dependency tree of reqwest.

Given that this PR seems to be based on a draft fork-of-a-fork branch that was edited without any code review, I think it would be very important to move the async-minreq crate to the bitcoindevkit org, have it undergo proper code review, and introduce co-maintainers before we'd want to take on this new dependency.

notmandatory

Good start and glad to see tests are passing. Per our call here are comments so far.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T14:58:18Z

Cargo.toml

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ documentation = "https://docs.rs/esplora-client/"
 description = "Bitcoin Esplora API client library. Supports plaintext, TLS and Onion servers. Blocking or async"
 keywords = ["bitcoin", "esplora"]
 readme = "README.md"
-rust-version = "1.63.0"
+rust-version = "1.70.0"


Suggested change

rust-version = "1.70.0"

rust-version = "1.71.0"

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T14:59:33Z

Cargo.toml

@@ -22,7 +22,8 @@ bitcoin = { version = "0.32", features = ["serde", "std"], default-features = fa
 hex = { version = "0.2", package = "hex-conservative" }
 log = "^0.4"
 minreq = { version = "2.11.0", features = ["json-using-serde"], optional = true }
-reqwest = { version = "0.12",  features = ["json"], default-features = false, optional = true }
+async_minreq = { git = "https://github.com/psg-19/async-minreq.git", default-features = false, optional = true }


Best to put this PR in draft mode until dependency changes like this are upstreamed and released.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:02:56Z

Cargo.toml

@@ -22,7 +22,8 @@ bitcoin = { version = "0.32", features = ["serde", "std"], default-features = fa
 hex = { version = "0.2", package = "hex-conservative" }
 log = "^0.4"
 minreq = { version = "2.11.0", features = ["json-using-serde"], optional = true }
-reqwest = { version = "0.12",  features = ["json"], default-features = false, optional = true }
+async_minreq = { git = "https://github.com/psg-19/async-minreq.git", default-features = false, optional = true }
+serde_json = "1.0.100"


This should be provided when the json-using-serde feature is enabled and not added here.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:05:29Z

Cargo.toml

+async-https-native = ["async"]
+async-https-rustls = ["async"]


Are these features needed if they don't activate new features in async_minreq ?
Once you're able to confirm they work they should be tested in the CI matrix also.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:08:13Z

Cargo.toml

+async-https = ["async"]
+async-https-native = ["async"]
+async-https-rustls = ["async"]
+async-https-rustls-manual-roots = ["async"]


If this feature isn't supported by async-minreq, two questions:

can it be added as a new feature there? is it supported by minreq ?

if not what projects will be impacted if it is removed?

see if feature similar to blocking minreq make sense for async_minreq

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:10:35Z

src/async.rs

@@ -106,14 +77,17 @@ impl<S: Sleeper> AsyncClient<S> {
        let url = format!("{}{}", self.url, path);
        let response = self.get_with_retry(&url).await?;

-        if !response.status().is_success() {
+        if response.status_code > 299 {


Ideally the http status code values would be consts in the async_minreq crate, but if not you should add your own const to improve readability and as a place to document what it means.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:13:06Z

src/async.rs

@@ -284,7 +280,7 @@ impl<S: Sleeper> AsyncClient<S> {
    pub async fn get_tx_no_opt(&self, txid: &Txid) -> Result<Transaction, Error> {
        match self.get_tx(txid).await {
            Ok(Some(tx)) => Ok(tx),
-            Ok(None) => Err(Error::TransactionNotFound(*txid)),
+            Ok(None) => Err(Error::TransactionNotFound(*txid)), //look into


nit, can remove comment.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:14:08Z

src/async.rs

    /// Sends a GET request to the given `url`, retrying failed attempts
    /// for retryable error codes until max retries hit.
-    async fn get_with_retry(&self, url: &str) -> Result<Response, Error> {
+    async fn get_with_retry(&self, url: &str) -> Result<async_minreq::Response, Error> {


If possible should just be Response and have a use async_minreq::Response above.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:15:59Z

src/async.rs

@@ -478,8 +474,8 @@ impl<S: Sleeper> AsyncClient<S> {
    }
 }

-fn is_status_retryable(status: reqwest::StatusCode) -> bool {
-    RETRYABLE_ERROR_CODES.contains(&status.as_u16())
+fn is_status_retryable(status: i32) -> bool {


If async_minreq project is open to it would be nice to have a similar StatusCode enum in that project to use here and also instead of your 299 value above.

notmandatory · 2025-06-12T15:21:41Z

@tnull thanks for taking a look, @psg-19 is my summer of bitcoin mentee. I agree this is a big change but as you pointed out the goal is to reduce the dependency tree. I and @psg-19 will work with @BEULAHEVANJALIN on async_minreq to upstream changes we need and do any other work to get that crate ready for production use.

coveralls · 2025-06-12T18:37:53Z

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build 15519708808

Details

33 of 54 (61.11%) changed or added relevant lines in 1 file are covered.
No unchanged relevant lines lost coverage.
Overall coverage decreased (-0.6%) to 87.583%

Changes Missing Coverage	Covered Lines	Changed/Added Lines	%
src/async.rs	33	54	61.11%

Totals
Change from base Build 14597440477:	-0.6%
Covered Lines:	1058
Relevant Lines:	1208

💛 - Coveralls

psg-19 added 12 commits May 29, 2025 17:16

Replacing reqwest with async-minreq

a33a70a

fix:from_client function

2997b16

fix: is_status_retryable() function and post_request_hex() function c…

a4b945a

…ausing failure to some tests.

removed unwanted comments.

82070ea

fix: removed all .unwrap()

37f6263

removed code added for debugging.

60dcc98

fix: formatting issue fixed.

ee96f7a

removed reqwest from workflows.

2df003b

removed url crate from ci, since it acted as dependency for reqwest.

fda978f

Testing CI

345fc9a

Testing without native-tls and rustls features on MSRV 1.71.

dc22fce

fix: MSRV to 1.71

cbebc0c

tnull reviewed Jun 9, 2025

View reviewed changes

notmandatory added the summer-of-bitcoin Summer of Bitcoin Project Proposal label Jun 12, 2025

notmandatory assigned psg-19 Jun 12, 2025

notmandatory requested changes Jun 12, 2025

View reviewed changes

psg-19 marked this pull request as draft June 12, 2025 16:56

psg-19 added 2 commits June 14, 2025 17:48

fix: added async-https-native and async-https-rustls.

3922cee

added features.

6507d4f

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		async-https-native = ["async"]
		async-https-rustls = ["async"]

Replacing reqwest crate with async_minreq crate #128

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Overview

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Issues with my Implementation

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