A quick intro to thrift in Ruby and Go

Uses Ruby 2.1.0, golang 1.4.2, thrift 0.9.3 The thrift-generated go has changed significantly between pre 0.9x versions - this was tested with 0.9.3

This repo is meant as a gentle introduction to thrift in Ruby and Go. You should be familiar with both thrift, ruby and go beforehand:

• thrift.apache.org/tutorial/go

On Mac OS X

brew update
brew install thrift
sudo gem install thrift

If you're using a Ruby/gem version manager then substitute the appropriate statements in place of sudo gem install thrift above.

Note regarding python installation. It has been noted that the homebrew package doesn't install all of the required python bindings. The stated workaround is to download thrift-0.9.3.tar.gz uncompress it to a working directory and run sudo python setup.py install from within the lib/py directory. This didn't seem to be sufficient in my case and will revisit it at a later date.

This intro is split into 5 commits, each of which introduces a new concept.

Generating and running the Go server which must be done before the client.

thrift -r -gen go example.thrift
go run main.go

Any commit with a working server can be tested with a ruby client:

thrift -r -gen rb example.thrift
ruby RubyClient.py

If the python installation is suceessful, the the following can also be used:

thrift -r -gen py example.thrift
python client.py

A simple thriftfile. One service extends another, and an exception is present. The goal is to present as many esoteric cases in as little space as possible.

Notice the //go:generate statement at the top of main.go. This is run using go generate, and will regenerate the go thrift files for our defined service.

Generated files are committed so that they can be consumed by others using go get. It is the responsibility of the author to generate these files.

The handler is implemented, and plugged into a simple server.

Another service is added to the thriftfile.

Each service lives on its own port. Services should be distinct enough that they should not share a port, barring other concerns. If you find two services needing to share a port, they should probably not be two services.

Server initialization is factored into its own file, so that each server can be restarted separately.

The count function may be racy - it is refactored to use chans.

If a service requires internal data access, it may become racy. In that case, use chans to avoid data corruption, adding a goroutine to the constructor to watch for requests.

In real scenarios, files with large implementations should also be split to maintain readability.

• Compiled thrift files go into a folder named after the thriftfile: example.thrift -> example/
• Service handlers live within a that services folder: example.Service -> example/service/handler.go

For a preconfigured environment to run through this tutorial, visit https://www.terminal.com/tiny/LGLivnbJox