README

Thrift Javascript Library

This browser based Apache Thrift implementation supports RPC clients using the JSON protocol over Http[s] with XHR and WebSocket.

License

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Grunt Build

This is the base directory for the Apache Thrift JavaScript library. This directory contains a Gruntfile.js and a package.json. Many of the build and test tools used here require a recent version of Node.js to be installed. To install the support files for the Grunt build tool execute the command:

npm install

This reads the package.json and pulls in the appropriate sources from the internet. To build the JavaScript branch of Apache Thrift execute the command:

grunt

This runs the grunt build tool, linting all of the source files, setting up and running the tests, concatenating and minifying the main libraries and generating the html documentation.

If grunt is not installed you can install it with npm like this:

sudo npm install -g grunt-cli npm install grunt --save-dev

Tree

The following directories are present (some only after the grunt build): /src - The JavaScript Apache Thrift source /doc - HTML documentation /dist - Distribution files (thrift.js and thrift.min.js) /test - Various tests, this is a good place to look for example code /node_modules - Build support files installed by npm

Example JavaScript Client and Server

The listing below demonstrates a simple browser based JavaScript Thrift client and Node.js JavaScript server for the hello_svc service.

hello.thrift - Service IDL

build with: $ thrift -gen js -gen js:node hello.thrift

service hello_svc {
  string get_message(1: string name)
}

hello.html - Browser Client

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Hello Thrift</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    Name: <input type="text" id="name_in">
    <input type="button" id="get_msg" value="Get Message" >
    <div id="output"></div>

    <script src="thrift.js"></script>
    <script src="gen-js/hello_svc.js"></script>
    <script>
      (function() {
        var transport = new Thrift.TXHRTransport("/hello");
        var protocol  = new Thrift.TJSONProtocol(transport);
        var client    = new hello_svcClient(protocol);
        var nameElement = document.getElementById("name_in");
        var outputElement = document.getElementById("output");
        document.getElementById("get_msg")
          .addEventListener("click", function(){
            client.get_message(nameElement.value, function(result) {
              outputElement.innerHTML = result;
            });
          });
      })();
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

hello.js - Node Server

var thrift = require('thrift');
var hello_svc = require('./gen-nodejs/hello_svc.js');

var hello_handler = {
  get_message: function(name, result) {
    var msg = "Hello " + name + "!";
    result(null, msg);
  }
}

var hello_svc_opt = {
  transport: thrift.TBufferedTransport,
  protocol: thrift.TJSONProtocol,
  processor: hello_svc,
  handler: hello_handler
};

var server_opt = {
  staticFilePath: ".",
  services: {
    "/hello": hello_svc_opt
  }
}

var server = Thrift.createWebServer(server_opt);
var port = 9099;
server.listen(port);
console.log("Http/Thrift Server running on port: " + port);

TypeScript

TypeScript definition files can also be generated by running:

thrift --gen js:ts file.thrift

thrift-lala

Usage no npm install needed!