Apache Thrift

Apache Thrift: Cross-Language Service Development Tool

Apache Thruff is an interface definition language and binary communication protocol used to define and create services for numerous languages. It allows easy cross-language service development, enabling users to build and use robust services that work across programming languages like JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C++, C#, Java, Smalltalk, and OCaml.

What is Apache Thrift?

Apache Thrift is an open source software framework for scalable cross-language services development. It combines an interface definition language (IDL) with a code generation engine to build services that work across a variety of programming languages.

Some key features and benefits of Apache Thrift include:

• Language and platform neutral - services built with Thrift can be used by clients and servers written in a variety of languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, C++ etc.
• Efficient data serialization - Thrift has a binary protocol that provides high performance, compact data serialization.
• Code generation - Thrift translates the interface definition in the IDL into target language code for the RPC client and server stubs automatically.
• Minimal dependencies - Thrift does not require any dependencies outside of the base language standard libraries making it easy to integrate into existing applications.
• Extensibility - Users can customize Thrift's code generation and serialization mechanisms for specific use cases.
• Active open source community - As part of Apache, Thrift has an active community of contributors adding features and fixing bugs.

Companies like Facebook, Evernote, Uber and Apache HBase use Thrift for building high-performance cross-platform services. It can be a great foundation for microservices architectures due to its language neutrality and efficiency.

Apache Thrift Features

Official Links