zerorpc

A protocol (and Python implementation) for RPC over ZeroMQ which uses JSON for data serialization. The resulting Python implementation is approx 5x faster than the corresponding xmlrpcserver & client in the single-threaded case, and nearly 10x faster in the multithreaded case. It is simple to achieve over 10K RPC calls/sec with this implementation.

Requirements

• Python tested with 2.7
• ZeroMQ Python bindings
• UltraJson but you can plug in your own JSON serializer/deserializer

Example

Server

Create an instance of ZeroRpcServer, register functions and/or class instances, and call start(). Functions can be referenced by different names and/or organized into dotted namespaces.

def mult(a, b):
    return a * b

server = zerorpc.server.ZeroRpcServer("tcp://*:5555")
server.register_function(mult, name="my.namespace.mult")
server.start(3, blocking=False)

Client

Create an instance of ZeroRpcClient and call methods on it as if the functions were defined on that instance. The call is marshaled to the server transparently. Exceptions on the server are propagated to the client.

client = zerorpc.client.ZeroRpcClient("tcp://localhost:5555")
result = client.my.namespace.mult(5, 7)

MultiCall

MultiCall works similarly to the xmlrpclib implementation. The calls are marshaled to the server, and the result is returned, in one network roundtrip.

client = zerorpc.client.ZeroRpcClient("tcp://localhost:5555")
multicall = zerorpc.client.MultiCall(client)
multicall.my.namespace.mult(2, 2)
multicall.my.namespace.mult(3, 3)
multicall.my.namespace.mult(4, 4)
for result in multicall():
    print result

Example Benchmarks

To run benchmarks on your own machine see the benchmarks subdirectory

I got these results on Win XP x64 edition, Intel Xeon CPU W3530 @ 2.80GHz, 12GB RAM

• xmlrpc client & server (single-threaded): 850 calls/sec
• zerorpc client & server (single-threaded): 4500 calls/sec
• xmlrpc client & server (multi-threaded): 1200 calls/sec
• zerorpc client & server (multi-threaded): 11000 calls/sec

Todo

• Write more tests
• Documentation

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Kevin T. Manley

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.