motivation
non-blocking
in time sensitive or "real time" applications, it might be desirable to use the RPC mechanisms of apache thrift in a non-blocking, asynchronous manner.
By using boost::asio for the implementation for the client transport and server no extra threads have to be created. The non-blocking server can serve multiple clients and can be polled/updated from the main thread (or any other thread that is convenient).
another advantage is, that the application developer is in control of when exactly the RPC callbacks are called.
An interesting read on the topic is The C10K problem.
bidirectional
Apache thrift by design employs a client server model. That is, a client initiates a request, the server fulfills it. There is no obvious way to perform bidirectional communication other than via the response to a request.
This implementation enables bidirectional communication without creating another network connection from the server to the client. For this to work, all rpc functions have to be marked as 'oneway' to keep the beck-channel free of packets.
design
This library is header-only. Also C++11 stl data-types are used in precedence over boosts wherever possible.
documentation
Read the API Docs
License
This library is Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0 .
Bugs
In case you find any bugs, please don't hesitate to contact me. Also pull-requests are highly apprechiated.