December 2025
Intermediate to advanced
272 pages
7h 22m
English
Overview
“WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing.”
–Solomon Hykes, founder of Docker
Server-Side WebAssembly shows you how to harness the power of Wasm on the application back-end. By following the numerous practical examples and crystal-clear explanations, you’ll soon be seeing the benefits of reduced cold start times, improved security and performance, and the freedom of polyglot programming.
Inside Server-Side WebAssembly you’ll learn how to:
Server-Side WebAssembly lays out everything you need to take WebAssembly beyond its traditional browser domain. You’ll put on the hats of a systems architect, a backend developer, and even a DevOps engineer to get a full picture of WebAssembly development from both an architecture and development perspective.
About the Technology
WebAssembly (Wasm) revolutionized frontend development by enabling secure, high-performance code in the browser. Now it’s doing the same for backend infrastructure as a platform for lightweight, portable applications that run anywhere. In this book, you’ll learn how to build production-grade server-side apps using Wasm.
About the Book
Server-Side WebAssembly teaches you to use WebAssembly components and the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) to build web back ends. You’ll start with Wasm fundamentals and then quickly start building a realistic content management system complete with data storage, HTTP servers, and AI-generated content. As you go, you’ll see how Wasm integrates code from multiple languages and connects naturally with databases, AI/ML systems, and deployment platforms like Kubernetes.
What's Inside
About the Reader
For intermediate web developers. Code samples in Rust, JavaScript and Python.
About the Author
Danilo Chiarlone works at Microsoft on cloud and virtualization technologies and is a contributor to several WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) proposals.
Quotes
Captures the most recent standards and open-source developments with clear, approachable explanations, diagrams, and code samples.
- Luke Wagner, W3C WebAssembly WG co-chair
Everything you need to get started with Wasm-on-the-server!
- Alex Crichton, Fermyon
Does a wonderful job describing the current ecosystem in practical examples.
- David Pech, Wrike
The one place to grok WebAssembly!
- Ralph Squillace, Microsoft
Comprehensive and in-depth.
- Bailey Hayes, Cosmonic
–Solomon Hykes, founder of Docker
Server-Side WebAssembly shows you how to harness the power of Wasm on the application back-end. By following the numerous practical examples and crystal-clear explanations, you’ll soon be seeing the benefits of reduced cold start times, improved security and performance, and the freedom of polyglot programming.
Inside Server-Side WebAssembly you’ll learn how to:
- Develop and deploy server-side Wasm applications
- Create and manage Wasm containers with OCI
- Compile Wasm components from multiple languages
- Scale Wasm applications using Kubernetes
- Deploy Wasm applications across different environments
- Integrate with databases and machine learning
Server-Side WebAssembly lays out everything you need to take WebAssembly beyond its traditional browser domain. You’ll put on the hats of a systems architect, a backend developer, and even a DevOps engineer to get a full picture of WebAssembly development from both an architecture and development perspective.
About the Technology
WebAssembly (Wasm) revolutionized frontend development by enabling secure, high-performance code in the browser. Now it’s doing the same for backend infrastructure as a platform for lightweight, portable applications that run anywhere. In this book, you’ll learn how to build production-grade server-side apps using Wasm.
About the Book
Server-Side WebAssembly teaches you to use WebAssembly components and the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) to build web back ends. You’ll start with Wasm fundamentals and then quickly start building a realistic content management system complete with data storage, HTTP servers, and AI-generated content. As you go, you’ll see how Wasm integrates code from multiple languages and connects naturally with databases, AI/ML systems, and deployment platforms like Kubernetes.
What's Inside
- Integrate components from multiple languages
- Deploy Wasm applications on Kubernetes
- Connect Wasm apps to databases and ML systems
About the Reader
For intermediate web developers. Code samples in Rust, JavaScript and Python.
About the Author
Danilo Chiarlone works at Microsoft on cloud and virtualization technologies and is a contributor to several WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) proposals.
Quotes
Captures the most recent standards and open-source developments with clear, approachable explanations, diagrams, and code samples.
- Luke Wagner, W3C WebAssembly WG co-chair
Everything you need to get started with Wasm-on-the-server!
- Alex Crichton, Fermyon
Does a wonderful job describing the current ecosystem in practical examples.
- David Pech, Wrike
The one place to grok WebAssembly!
- Ralph Squillace, Microsoft
Comprehensive and in-depth.
- Bailey Hayes, Cosmonic
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.