Question

I am getting myself a bit confused about how to go about this. My plan is to use PHP to perform the final page construction and this PHP web app will contact multiple services, which i will also to develop, for the data. Lets say one of those services was done in Java. I would define a Java interface which was implemented by a concrete class. This is where I get confused – how does Thrift link the PHP web app with the java service or am I getting totally mixed up??

Thanks

Answer 1

Thrift is based on the use of an IDL (Interface Definition Language). Using the definition from Wikipedia:

An interface description language (or
alternately, interface definition
language), or IDL for short, is a
specification language used to
describe a software component’s
interface. IDLs describe an interface
in a language-neutral way, enabling
communication between software
components that do not share a
language – for example, between
components written in C++ and
components written in Java.

An example on how to use the Thrift interface language is available in the Thrift tutorial.

By the use of a .thrift file, you’re suppose to define the interfaces you need (in terms of types and services). For example, in your .thrift file, you could define a simple function like:

i32 add(1:i32 num1, 2:i32 num2)

that represents a function to sum two integers.

When you’re ready with your .thrift file, you can generate the Java, PHP, Erlang, whatever code that you need (server-side or client-side), using the Thrift generator.

Refer to the Thrift wiki for more information.