RPC Demo

This repository contains instructions for trying out Apache Thrift and gRPC on
Ubuntu 14.

Using Thrift

1. Install Thrift as follows (though if you want the latest version of Thrift,
   you should build it from source).

• sudo pip install thrift
• sudo apt-get install thrift-compiler
• sudo apt-get install ipython

2. Then do the following (after cloning this repository).

• cd rpc-demo/thrift_files

• Generate the Python files with

  thrift --gen py messages.thrift
  

3. Run the code.

• Start the server with python server.py.

• Start the client with python client.py. This drops you into an ipython shell.

• Enter commands in the client such as

  client.SayHello("Robert")
  

  to send a message to the server process. Or

  %timeit client.SayHello("Robert")
  

  to benchmark the rpc.

Using gRPC

1. Install gRPC with the commands below.

• sudo pip install grpcio
• sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool
• sudo apt-get install ipython
• git clone https://github.com/grpc/grpc.git
• cd grpc
• git submodule update --init
• make
• sudo make install
• sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler (to keep setup simple, we use an old version of Protobuf)

2. After that, do the following (after cloning this repository).

• cd rpc-demo/grpc_files

• Generate the Python files with

  protoc -I . --python_out=. --grpc_out=. --plugin=protoc-gen-grpc=`which grpc_python_plugin` messages.proto
  

3. Run the code.

• Start the server with python server.py

• Start the client with python client.py

• Enter commands such as

  stub.SayHello(messages_pb2.HelloRequest(name="Robert"), 1)
  

  to send a message to the server process. Or

  %timeit stub.SayHello(messages_pb2.HelloRequest(name="Robert"), 1)