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Facebook's Cross-Language Network Library
koreth writes "Facebook has released Thrift, a toolkit for making remote method calls. It generates interoperable network code in C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Its protocol is much more lightweight (and probably much higher-performance) than SOAP or CORBA. Facebook uses it internally for high-traffic services like search. The license is extremely permissive."
Just what the world needed, Yet Another RPC Framework. I guess on the bright side, it can't possibly suck any harder than CORBA.
I feel no pain for uninformed users. I'm sorry, but if you put something on the internet and don't know about how it'll be displayed or shown or shared or whatever (accessed?) then you deserve whatever you get.
You do realize that Facebook is a fantastic example of a clean, functional UI that only uses fancy 'web 2.0' features ala AJAX where it's actually useful?
MySpace, on the other hand, is a piece of shit.
I'm sorry, but to a large extent, the users make the site. And when the majority of your users are teenage morons.. well.. your site tends to go to shit.
RTFA
They're not giving away any API to their data.
What they've released is nothing more than a platform-independant RPC protocol.
And a weird one at that. Instead of relying on common, generic data-format such as XML, they seem to be relying on a custom compiler for their own definition language. I'm sure the underlying data-format is usable without the compiler, but then there could be better methods for writing/reading it.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Post benchmarks to prove a statement or don't state it at all. Don't use weasel words to try to convey a point of view without solid evidence. BTW, it seems this statement was made by either the submitter or the editor, since I couldn't find anything mentioning it on TFA.
According to the tutorial this api relies on code generation, which I personally don't like.
Does anybody know any good C++ RPC library which uses templates and which does not need code generating with any external tool nor executable?
C++ templates allows metaprogramming, so such tools should be able to be developped, but I don't know any. Does anybody know any?
- Garo
Ignoring the users of Facebook, the site is about the use of technology. They made their job easy on themselves and created a framework to make their own jobs that much easier. And...in the same spirit of other companies, are releasing that software to the public. I applaud this. May the best framework win!
Bearded Dragon
Sorry, try again. They didn't release their internal API, they released a framework for RPC calls. Completely different, which you might have noticed if you had actually read the article. And if you don't want your information shared, don't put it somewhere beyond your physical control, i.e. on Facebook.
Its also as good a way as any to get developers outside your company to train in using your platform. You don't even have to pay them for their training, or while they're doing it. Then you can hire the good ones out of the community. Doesn't look so altruistic now does it? :P
So they wrote something in-house, for their own reasons. Open-source advocates say "release everything... it'll be useful to someone". So they did release it, and then they get slammed for not using the existing standards and because people don't like their methodologies.
Bravo.