fRPC (or Frisbee RPC), is an RPC Framework (similar to gRPC orApache Thrift) that's designed from the ground up to be lightweight, extensible, and extremely performant.
We built fRPC because we loved the idea of defining our message types in a standardizedproto3 format and having the protobuf compiler generate all the necessary
glue code for us, but we didn't like the overhead of encoding and decoding
messages in the Protobuf format, and wanted a wire protocol that was lighter and faster
than HTTP/2.
fRPC offers a few major improvements over existing
RPC frameworks like gRPC:
- Speed - On average fRPC outperforms other RPC frameworks by 2-4x in an apples-to-apples comparison, and is easily able to handle more than 2 million RPCs/second on a single server
- Flexibility - Not only does fRPC allow developers to deviate from the standard request/reply messaging pattern and implement custom patterns alongside their existing RPCs, but developers also have the ability to turn fRPC off and retrieve the underlying TCP connections so they can be reused for something else
- Familiarity - Using fRPC feels very familiar to anyone who's used gRPC before, which means that developers can take advantage of the speed and extensibility that fRPC provides without a steep learning curve
fRPC works by making use of protobuf plugins, and allows developers to use their existing proto3 files to generate a full
RPC Framework that uses Frisbee under the hood. Our goal is to make fRPC a drop-in
replacement for gRPC thanks to its generated interfaces matching gRPC's, however we don't support all of the features that
gRPC does yet, most notable being Streaming and OneOf message types.
fRPC vs Frisbee
It's important to note the distinction between fRPC and Frisbee. fRPC uses proto3 files to generate client and server
implementations that use the Frisbee framework under the hood. This is why fRPC is so performant compared to other RPC
frameworks - the Frisbee messaging framework and wire protocol are lightweight and extremely optimized.
At its core, Frisbee is best described as a bring-your-own-protocol messaging framework. Our goal was
to make it possible for developers to define their own messaging patterns and protocols, and have the actual
lower-level implementations done for them by the library.
Getting started with fRPC
Over the next few pages we'll walk you through the process of getting started with fRPC,
from defining your message types in a proto3 file, to writing your first server and client.
We'll also introduce the core concepts around Frisbee as well as how you can use the Framework to build your own custom messaging protocols.
