Question

I am using the thrift ruby gem and am doing the following

serializer = Thrift::Serializer.new()
binary_string=serializer.serialize(my_thrift_obj)

and I am storing this binary_string in a file, but I noticed there is no compression at all. Is there any way I can compress my_thrift_obj while serializing?

Also, is there a way to serialize arbitrary ruby hashes to thrift objects?

Answer 1

I got the following reply from the thrift author Mark Slee.

The compact protocol doesn’t do compression, the word compact refers
to the way it encodes structure and type metadata.

Thrift is intended for strongly-typed structured data serialization,
not compression. A file is already serialized – it sounds like what
you really want is to compress serialized data. Would recommend using
zlib or gzip for that.