This project should eventually be included in upstream https://github.com/apache/thrift when the code is sufficiently matured. Currently the software design follows https://github.com/boostorg/beast more than Apache thrift. But over time this is expected to change, so that Boost::beast becomes the workhorse under the hood, but Apache thrift the high-level interface.
Apache thrift is a powerful RPC framework with bindings for many languages. As the evolution of software goes, not all language bindings provide the same functionality. Sometimes this may be due to missing language features that make it hard or impossible to implement functionality. And sometimes this may be due to sheer lack of manpower or interest.
At the time time of this writing, the Javascript bindings have fallen behind the Node.js bindings in several ways. Javascript currently features only a single protocol and a single transport, whereas Node.js features a number of protocols and transports. A noteworthy example is the binary protocol from Node.js that does not currently have an equivalent in Javascript.
On the positive side, tools like browserify and webpack make it possible to use some parts of the Node.js implementation in the browser. Why only parts? Because not all the features of the node client are provided by the web browser. For example, the node client can support raw TCP connections, which the browser does not support. Therefore the TCP connection only works in Node.js, independent of webpack/browserify.
To use the Node.js bindings in a browser, a tool like browserify or webpack is required to bundle the required dependencies and the various source files into one Javascript source file.
In this demo application, we have used webpack. The same should be possible with browserify, however we have not tried. Feedback would be very welcome.
From the point of thrift, we need to target a Node.js client. The bindings should be
generated with the target js:node:
thrift -strict -recurse -gen js:node -o ./src/ tutorial.thrift
For the same reason, the Node.js package and Node.js bindings of thrift will be used. The thrift.js sources itself does not provide and exports. Therefore it can not be used directly from webpack/browserify. Exports are provided via wrappers, i.e. via browser.js from the thrift module.
browser.js can be imported into a webpack bundled page with its full path. For
example when installing node modules in the local sub-folder node_modules,
the browser.js bindings can be imported as
var thrift = require('thrift/lib/nodejs/lib/thrift/browser');
The following development dependencies are required:
- Apache thrift and its dependencies:
npm install --save thrift bufferutil utf-8-validate error-polyfill
- Webpack for packaging Node.js:
npm install --save-dev webpack webpack-cli
This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details
This project would not have been possible without the help of
- Hirano Satoshi
- Eugen Kandakov