Thrift sample

What is Thrift?

Apache Thrift is an IDL specification, RPC framework, and code generator. It works across all major operating systems, supports over 27 programming languages, 7 protocols, and 6 low-level transports. Thrift was originally developed at Facebook in 2006 and then shared with the Apache Software Foundation. Thrift supports a rich set of types and data structures, and abstracts away transport and protocol details, which lets developers focus on application logic.

Overview

This sample application includes a client and server implementing the RPC interface described in samples/modules/thrift/hello/hello.thrift. The purpose of this example is to demonstrate how components at different layers in thrift can be combined to build an application with desired features.

Requirements

QEMU Networking (described in Networking with QEMU)
Thrift dependencies installed for your host OS e.g. in Ubuntu

Install additional dependencies in Ubuntu

sudo apt install -y libboost-all-dev thrift-compiler libthrift-dev

Building and Running

This application can be run on a Linux host, with either the server or the client in the QEMU environment, and the peer is built and run natively on the host.

Building the Native Client and Server

$ make -j -C samples/modules/thrift/hello/client/
$ make -j -C samples/modules/thrift/hello/server/

Under client/, 3 executables will be generated, and components used in each layer of them are listed below:

hello_client	TSocket	TBufferedTransport	TBinaryProtocol
hello_client_compact	TSocket	TBufferedTransport	TCompactProtocol
hello_client_ssl	TSSLSocket	TBufferedTransport	TBinaryProtocol

The same applies for the server. Only the client and the server with the same set of stacks can communicate.

Additionally, there is a hello_client.py Python script that can be used interchangeably with the hello_client C++ application to illustrate the cross-language capabilities of Thrift.

hello_client.py

TSocket

TBufferedTransport

TBinaryProtocol

Running the Zephyr Server in QEMU

Build the Zephyr version of the hello/server sample application like this:

west build -b board_name samples/modules/thrift/hello/server

To enable advanced features, extra arguments should be passed accordingly:

TCompactProtocol: -DCONFIG_THRIFT_COMPACT_PROTOCOL=y
TSSLSocket: -DCONF_FILE="prj.conf ../overlay-tls.conf"

For example, to build for qemu_x86_64 with TSSLSocket support:

west build -b qemu_x86_64 samples/modules/thrift/hello/server -- -DCONF_FILE="prj.conf ../overlay-tls.conf"
west build -t run

In another terminal, run the hello_client sample app compiled for the host OS:

$ ./hello_client 192.0.2.1
$ ./hello_client_compact 192.0.2.1
$ ./hello_client_ssl 192.0.2.1 ../native-cert.pem ../native-key.pem ../qemu-cert.pem

You should observe the following in the original hello/server terminal:

ping
echo: Hello, world!
counter: 1
counter: 2
counter: 3
counter: 4
counter: 5

In the client terminal, run hello_client.py app under the host OS (not described for compact or ssl variants for brevity):

$ ./hello_client.py

You should observe the following in the original hello/server terminal. Note that the server’s state is not discarded (the counter continues to increase).

ping
echo: Hello, world!
counter: 6
counter: 7
counter: 8
counter: 9
counter: 10

Running the Zephyr Client in QEMU

In another terminal, run the hello_server sample app compiled for the host OS:

$ ./hello_server 0.0.0.0
$ ./hello_server_compact 0.0.0.0
$ ./hello_server_ssl 0.0.0.0 ../native-cert.pem ../native-key.pem ../qemu-cert.pem

Then, in annother terminal, run the corresponding hello/client sample:

west build -b qemu_x86_64 samples/modules/thrift/hello/client
west build -t run

The additional arguments for advanced features are the same as hello/server.

You should observe the following in the original hello_server terminal:

ping
echo: Hello, world!
counter: 1
counter: 2
counter: 3
counter: 4
counter: 5