Embedding http server inside thrift server


The thrift server allows you to set a http handler for any incoming http request coming on the same port. You can embed http server inside a thrift server for viewing diagnostics/debugging data from the web interface. There may be many other use cases too.


Here is the server code

#include <iostream>
#include "gen-cpp2/Calculator.h"
#include <thrift/lib/cpp2/server/ThriftServer.h>

using namespace std;
using namespace apache::thrift;
using namespace example::cpp2;

class CalculatorSvc : public CalculatorSvIf
{
 public:
  virtual ~CalculatorSvc() {}
  void async_tm_add(
    std::unique_ptr<apache::thrift::HandlerCallback<int64_t>> callback,
    int32_t num1,
    int32_t num2)
  {
    cout << "Got async request " << num1 << " + " << num2 << endl;
    callback->result(num1 + num2);
  }
};

// httpHandler is called whenever a http request is received by thrift server
void httpHandler(
  apache::thrift::async::TEventBase* ev,
  std::shared_ptr<apache::thrift::async::TAsyncTransport> tr,
  std::unique_ptr<folly::IOBuf> buf)
{
  /*
  buf: contains the request header raw data. To get the request detail
  you must use some http request header parser.

  The response has to be written in tr. This is basically a socket.
  */
  std::cout << "Got http request" << std::endl;
  // Create http response. A better approach will be to use some http response builder
  // But for this example, we are directly preparing raw response
  std::string resp = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\nContent-Type: text/html\r\nContent-Length: 11\r\n\r\nHello World";
  tr->write(nullptr, resp.c_str(), resp.size());
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  ThriftServer* s = new ThriftServer();
  getHandlerFunc hf = httpHandler;
  // Set http handler
  s->setGetHandler(hf);
  std::shared_ptr<CalculatorSvc> ptr(new  CalculatorSvc());
  s->setInterface(ptr);
  s->setPort(8080);
  s->serve();
  return 0;
}

Compile this server in the same way as you compiled the first server example. Run this server and then open a web browser and navigate to http://hostname:8080 (The hostname is the name of the host on which you are running the server. You can also use IP address instead of host name). You will see the browser has received a “Hello World” string. Same server can also serve the calculator client. It is amazing… right?


How does it work? Actually the thrift checks the initial few bytes of any request it receives and check if it matches to one of http methods (e.g. GET, POST, HEAD etc). If it matches then it declares the request as http request and calls http handler.


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