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Asked: 2026-05-12T18:27:45+00:00

I’ve been asked to process some files serialized as binary (not text/JSON unfortunately) Thrift

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I’ve been asked to process some files serialized as binary (not text/JSON unfortunately) Thrift objects, but I don’t have access to the program or programmer that created the files, so I have no idea of their structure, field order, etc. Is there a way using the Thrift libraries to open a binary file and analyze it, getting a list of the field types, values, nesting, etc.?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Unfortunately it appears that Thrift’s binary protocol does not do very much tagging of data at all; to decode it appears to assume you have the .thrift file in hand so you know, say, the next 4 bytes are supposed to be an integer, and aren’t actually the first half of a float. So it appears you are stuck with, basically, looking at the files in a hex editor (or equivalent) and trying to deduce fields based on the exact patterns you’re seeing.

    There are a very few helpful bits:

    Each file begins with a version, protocol identifier string, and sequence number. Maps will begin with 6 bytes that identify the key and value types (first two bytes, as integer codes) plus the number of elements as a 4 byte integer. The type codes appear to be standard (the canonical location of their definitions seems to be TProtocol.h in the Thrift sources, for instance a boolean value is specified by type code 2, UTF-8 string by type code 16, and so on). Strings are prefixed by a 4 byte integer length field, and lists are prefixed by the type (1 byte) and a 4 byte length. It looks like all integer fields are saved big-endian, and floating points are saved in IEEE format (which should make doubles relatively easy to find, at least).

    The TBinaryProtocol* files in Thrift have a few more helpful details; on the plus side, there are a number of different implementations so you can read the ones implemented in the language you are most comfortable with.

    Sorry, I know this probably isn’t that helpful but it really does appear this is all the information the Thrift binary format provides; clearly the binary format was designed with the intent that you would always know the exact protocol spec already, and that the goal was the minimize wire space, rather than make it at all easy to decode blindly.

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