[THRIFT-519] Support collections of types without having to explicitly define it

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Fix Version/s: 0.10.0
• Assignee: James E. King III
• Reporter: Nathan Marz
• Created: 04/Jun/09 09:37
• Updated: 06/Jan/16 02:06
• Resolved: 08/Dec/15 21:20

Description

I frequently find myself needing to be able to serialize/deserialize collections of objects across languages. Every time I need one of these collections, I have to explicitly define it in a thrift file. Some examples are:

struct FriendSet {
1: set<binary> friend_ids;
}

struct StringList {
1: list<string> strings;
}

struct FooList {
1: list<Foo> foos; // foo is a thrift struct
}

It would be convenient if Thrift supported collections of objects directly. Perhaps serialize/deserialize can support taking a list or set, such as:

TDeserializer des = new TDeserializer();
List<Foo> myList = new ArrayList<Foo>();
des.deserialize(myList, record);