Apache Thrift

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title: "Apache Thrift" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["apache-software-foundation-projects", "application-layer-protocols", "data-serialization-formats", "inter-process-communication", "remote-procedure-call", "facebook-software"] description: "Open-source remote procedure call framework" topic_path: "technology/networking" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Thrift" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Open-source remote procedure call framework ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	Apache Thrift
logo	Apache Thrift logo.svg
author	Facebook, Inc.
developer	Apache Software Foundation
latest_release_version	0.21.0
latest_release_date
repo
programming_language	ActionScript, C, C#, C++, D, Dart, Delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Haxe, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Rust, Scala, Smalltalk
genre	Remote procedure call framework
license	Apache 2.0
website
::

| name = Apache Thrift | logo = Apache Thrift logo.svg | screenshot = | caption = | collapsible = | author = Facebook, Inc. | developer = Apache Software Foundation | latest_release_version = 0.21.0 | latest_release_date = | latest_preview_version = | latest_preview_date = | operating_system = | repo = | programming_language = ActionScript, C, C#, C++, D, Dart, Delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Haxe, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Rust, Scala, Smalltalk | genre = Remote procedure call framework | license = Apache 2.0 | website = Thrift is an IDL (Interface Definition Language) and binary communication protocol used for defining and creating services for programming languages. It was developed by Facebook. Since 2020, it is an open source project in the Apache Software Foundation.

It uses a remote procedure call (RPC) framework and combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build cross-platform services. Thrift can connect applications written in a variety of languages and frameworks, including ActionScript, C, C++, C#, Cocoa, Delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Elixir, Rust, Scala, Smalltalk, and Swift. The implementation was described in an April 2007 technical paper released by Facebook, now hosted on Apache.

Architecture

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Apache_Thrift_architecture.png" caption="The Apache Thrift API client/server architecture"] ::

Thrift includes a complete stack for creating clients and servers. The top part is generated code from the Thrift definition. From this file, the services generate client and processor codes. In contrast to built-in types, created data structures are sent as a result of generated code. The protocol and transport layer are part of the runtime library. With Thrift, it is possible to define a service and change the protocol and transport without recompiling the code. Besides the client part, Thrift includes server infrastructure such as blocking, non-blocking, and multi-threaded servers. The underlying I/O part of the stack is implemented differently for different programming languages.

Thrift supports a number of protocols:

• TBinaryProtocol – A binary format not optimized for space efficiency. Faster to process than the text protocol.
• TCompactProtocol – More compact binary format.
• TJSONProtocol – Uses JSON for the encoding of data.
• TSimpleJSONProtocol – A write-only protocol that cannot be parsed by Thrift because it drops metadata using JSON. Suitable for parsing by scripting languages.

The supported transports are:

• TSimpleFileTransport – This transport writes to a file.
• TFramedTransport – This transport is required when using a non-blocking server. It sends data in frames, each preceded by length information.
• TMemoryTransport – Uses memory for I/O. The Java implementation uses a simple internally.
• TSocket – Uses blocking socket I/O for transport.
• TZlibTransport – Performs compression using zlib. Used in conjunction with another transport.

Thrift also provides a number of servers, which are:

• TNonblockingServer – A multi-threaded server using non-blocking I/O (Java implementation uses NIO channels). TFramedTransport must be used with this server.
• TSimpleServer – A single-threaded server using standard blocking I/O.
• TThreadedServer – A multi-threaded server using a thread per connection model and standard blocking I/O.
• TThreadPoolServer – A multi-threaded server using a thread pool and standard blocking I/O. Thrift is written in C++, but can create code for some other programming languages. To create a Thrift service, one has to write Thrift files that describe it, generate the code in the destination language, write some code to start the server, and call it from the client. An example of such a description file:

::code[lang=thrift] enum PhoneType { HOME, WORK, MOBILE, OTHER }

struct Phone { 1: i32 id, 2: string number, 3: PhoneType type }

service PhoneService { Phone findById(1: i32 id), list findAll() } ::

Thrift will generate the code out of this descriptive information. For instance, in Java, the PhoneType will be enum inside the Phone class.

References

References

1. "Apache Thrift - Downloads".
2. "Installing and using Apache Cassandra With Java Part 4 (Thrift Client)". Sodeso – Software Development Solutions.
3. Prunicki. "Apache Thrift: Introduction".
4. "ThriftRequirements".
5. Fred Potter, [http://blog.parallel48.com/using-thrift-with-cappuccino Using Thrift with Cappuccino] {{webarchive. link. (2011-08-12 , parallel48's posterously luscious blog, 10 June 2010.)
6. Andrew Prunicki. "Apache Thrift: Code Generation".
7. Mark Slee, Aditya Agarwal, Marc Kwiatkowski, [http://thrift.apache.org/static/files/thrift-20070401.pdf Thrift: Scalable Cross-Language Services Implementation]
8. (July 11, 2019). "LibraryFeatures".
9. Andrew Prunicki. "Apache Thrift: Introduction".
10. (3 August 2013). "Developer Friendly Thrift Request Logging".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::