Book Image

Learning Apache Thrift

Book Image

Learning Apache Thrift

Overview of this book

With modern software systems being increasingly complex, providing a scalable communication architecture for applications in different languages is tedious. The Apache Thrift framework is the solution to this problem! It helps build efficient and easy-to-maintain services and offers a plethora of options matching your application type by supporting several popular programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml, and Delphi. This book will help you set aside the basics of service-oriented systems through your first Apache Thrift-powered app. Then, progressing to more complex examples, it will provide you with tips for running large-scale applications in production environments. You will learn how to assess when Apache Thrift is the best tool to be used. To start with, you will run a simple example application, learning the framework's structure along the way; you will quickly advance to more complex systems that will help you solve various real-life problems. Moreover, you will be able to add a communication layer to every application written in one of the popular programming languages, with support for various data types and error handling. Further, you will learn how pre-eminent companies use Apache Thrift in their popular applications. This book is a great starting point if you want to use one of the best tools available to develop cross-language applications in service-oriented architectures.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Learning Apache Thrift
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
5
Generating and Running Code in Different Languages
Index

IDL syntax


Now that you have the knowledge of the Apache Thrift's variable types, it is time to put those together in a single file describing our interface.

Note

In this section, only the most important elements of official IDL syntax were described. If you would like to go deeper into the details, read the formal syntax definition or learn about deprecated elements at https://thrift.apache.org/docs/idl.

Apache Thrift's IDL syntax will be familiar to the developers programming in C++, Java, or even PHP. Let's have a look at the most important components.

Comments

Apache Thrift supports three types of comments. The first is a bash-style comment—a line beginning with #:

# This is a comment

The second syntax is C++/Java/PHP-style—a line with // at the beginning:

// This is a comment

The last type of supported comment syntax is C-style multiline with /* at the beginning and */ at the end (using space and * at the beginning of every line is a common convention in many programming languages, although...