Recently, Twitter made waves in the open-source community by publicly sharing its search ranking system, a critical component of the platform's user experience that helps users find the most relevant and timely content based on their search queries. However, the process of ranking tweets in real-time presents a number of technical challenges, such as efficiently processing large volumes of data and communicating between multiple services involved in the ranking process.
Apache Thrift, an open-source framework for communication between services, played a key role in enabling efficient communication between the various services involved in Twitter's search ranking process. By defining data structures and interfaces in a language-agnostic way, Apache Thrift allowed services written in different programming languages to communicate with each other seamlessly and efficiently, making it an ideal choice for a real-time system like Twitter's search ranking.
In this article, we'll explore the role of Apache thrift and specific ways in which Apache Thrift is used , and how it helps solve some of the technical challenges .
What is apache thrift
Apache Thrift is an open-source framework for implementing remote procedure call (RPC) services. It was developed by Facebook in 2007, and later became an Apache Software Foundation project in 2008. The goal of Apache Thrift is to provide a simple and efficient way for services written in different programming languages to communicate with each other over a network.
Thrift works by defining a set of data structures and service interfaces using a domain-specific language called Thrift IDL (Interface Definition Language). This IDL is then used to generate code in multiple programming languages, which can be used to implement the server and client components of the RPC service. Thrift supports a wide range of programming languages, including Java, Python, C++, Ruby, and many others.
Benefits of apache thrift
1.Language Independence: With Thrift, developers can define their services using an interface definition language (IDL), which is independent of any specific programming language. The Thrift compiler then generates code in the target language, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms.
2.Efficient Data Transfer: Thrift uses a compact binary protocol to transfer data between client and server applications, which reduces network overhead and improves performance. The binary protocol is also designed to be extensible, allowing developers to add custom data types and serialization formats.
3.Cross-Platform Compatibility: Thrift supports a wide range of programming languages, including Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, C++, and many more. This makes it an ideal choice for building applications that need to communicate across different platforms and operating systems.
4.Service Evolution: As applications evolve over time, it is often necessary to add new features and functionality. Thrift makes it easy to add new services without breaking existing clients or servers. This is achieved through versioning, which allows developers to define multiple versions of the same service and choose which version to use at runtime.
5.Scalability: Thrift is designed to be scalable, with support for multiple transport protocols, load balancing, and connection pooling.
How Twitter is utilising Thrift
Twitter uses Thrift to define several data structures for ranking tweets, including ThriftLinearFeatureRankingParams, ThriftAgeDecayRankingParams, ThriftHostQualityParams, and ThriftCardRankingParams. These data structures allow Twitter to store and process tweet ranking information efficiently, resulting in faster and more accurate tweet rankings.
Additionally, Twitter uses Thrift to define a variety of ranking parameters, including score parameters for various tweet features like retweet count, reply count, reputation, and text score. By defining these parameters in a concise and structured format, Twitter can easily modify and experiment with their ranking algorithms without rewriting large amounts of code.
Thrift also allows Twitter to dynamically load custom ranking algorithms and collectors for experimentation purposes. This feature provides Twitter with the flexibility to test new ranking strategies quickly, enabling them to iterate and improve their ranking algorithms continuously.
Here is the link to the Thrift file for the thrift ranking definitions:https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/main/src/thrift/com/twitter/search/common/ranking/ranking.thrift
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