Akka HTTP is an open-source library for building distributed and concurrent applications with a powerful API. It is based on the Akka toolkit which provides an event-driven model for distributed systems, allowing developers to create solutions that are more resilient and responsive than traditional architectures. The library offers an intuitive, yet powerful API that enables developers to create high-performance web services quickly and easily.
Akka HTTP is built on top of Netty, an asynchronous event-driven network application framework. This makes it possible to build highly efficient web services with low latency and minimal complexity. The library also provides several features such as request validation, content negotiation, response caching and more. Additionally, it allows developers to access the underlying Netty channel directly in order to access advanced features such as SSL/TLS encryption or low-level customization of the request/response flows.
The library also provides out of the box support for streaming data over HTTP using its streaming module which is based on the popular Reactive Streams specification. This makes it easy to build highly efficient streaming applications using a declarative style that allows developers to focus on their business logic instead of dealing with complex network protocols.
Overall, Akka HTTP is a modern open-source library for building high performance reactive web services quickly and easily while still providing advanced features such as streaming support or direct access to the underlying Netty channel. It simplifies development complexity while still enabling developers to create fault tolerant systems that can handle large amounts of traffic efficiently.