The Apache Thrift API client/server architecture

http://thrift.apache.org/

The Apache Thrift software framework, for scalable cross-language services development, combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml and Delphi and other languages.

Apache Thrift - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Thrift

Thrift is an interface definition language and binary communication protocol^[1] used for defining and creating services for numerous languages.^[2] It forms a remote procedure call (RPC) framework and was developed at Facebook for "scalable cross-language services development". It combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build cross-platform services which can connect applications written in a variety of languages and frameworks, including ActionScript, C, C++,^[3] C#, Cappuccino,^[4] Cocoa, Delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, Node.js,Objective-C, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Smalltalk.^[5] Although developed at Facebook, it is now an open source project in the Apache Software Foundation. The implementation was described in an April 2007 technical paper released by Facebook, now hosted on Apache.^[6][7]

Benefits

Some stated benefits of Thrift include:^{[citation needed]}

• Cross-language serialization with lower overhead than alternatives such as SOAP due to use of binary format
• A lean and clean library. No framework to code. No XML configuration files.
• The language bindings feel natural. For example, Java uses ArrayList<String>. C++ uses std::vector<std::string>.
• The application-level wire format and the serialization-level wire format are cleanly separated. They can be modified independently.
• The predefined serialization styles include: binary, HTTP-friendly and compact binary.
• Doubles as cross-language file serialization.
• Soft versioning^[clarify] of the protocol. Thrift does not require a centralized and explicit mechanism like major-version/minor-version. Loosely coupled teams can freely evolve RPC calls.
• No build dependencies or non-standard software. No mix of incompatible software licenses.

Apache Thrift - 可伸缩的跨语言服务开发框架 https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cn/java/j-lo-apachethrift/