Tars Protocol

• Tars Language
• Tars Protocol

1. Tars language

1.1. Interface file

The Tars language is a C++-like identifier language used to generate specific service interface files.

The Tars file is the communication interface between the client and the server in the Tars framework, and realizes the remote procedure call through the mapping of Tars.

Tars file extension must have a .tars extension

For structure definitions, extended fields can be supported, that is, fields can be added without affecting the resolution of the original structure, and can be used separately in places such as storage /protocol.

Case Sensitive

1.2. Lexical rules

1.2.1. Notes

Use the C++ annotation specification.

// indicates a comment line, /**/ indicates all the code in the comment range.

1.2.2. Keywords

void,struct,bool,byte,short,int,double,float,long,string,vector,map,key,routekey,module,interface,out,require,optional,false,true,enum,const

1.2.3. Identifier

All identifiers cannot have the ‘tars_’ symbol and must start with a letter and cannot conflict with the keyword.

1.3. Basic types

The basic types of support include the following:

void : can only be represented in the return value of the function

bool : boolean type, mapped to tars::Bool

byte : signed characters, mapped to tars::Char

short : signed short integer, mapped to tars::Short

int : signed integer, mapped to tars::Int32

long : signed long integer, mapped to tars::Int64

float : Map to tars::Float

double : Map to tars::Double

string : Map to std::string, java:String

unsigned byte : unsigned character, c++ mapped to unsigend char other versions tars::Short

unsigned short : unsigned short integer c++ mapped to unsigned short other versions tars::Int32

unsigned int : unsigned integer c++ mapped to unsigned int other versions tars::Int64

1.4. Complex types

1.4.1. Enumeration

The definition of the enumerated type is as follows:

enum TE
{
    E1,
    E2,
    E3
};

Description:

• Enumeration type supports the value of the specified enumeration variable, for example, support: E1 = 1;

• The first defined enumeration type value is 0, where E1 is 0;

• For Enumeration type, after the tars file is defined and generated through tars2cpp, we will not only get the corresponding enum definition but also the etos and stoe functions which convert enumeration value to string or convert string to enumeration value, respectively. It is convenient when debugging code.

• It is recommended that in the C++ tars file, all interfaces are returned as int, and the return value is defined in the tars file as an enumeration.

1.4.2. Constants

Constants can be defined in the Tars file, for example:

const int a = 0;

const string s = "abc";

Description:

• Since map, vector does not describe the value of a constant, it does not support the definition of map, vector;

1.4.3. Structure

The structure is defined as follows:

struct Test
{
    0 require string s;
    1 optional int i = 23;
};

key[Test, s, i];

Description:

• The first column of numbers indicates the tag of the field. Regardless of the structure increase or decrease field, the value of the field does not change and must correspond to the response field.

• The value of Tag must be >=0 and <=255;

• ‘require’ indicates that the field is mandatory;

• ‘optional’ indicates that this field is optional;

• For the ‘optional’ field, there can be a default value, the default value is not packaged by default when encoding;

‘key’ description:

• Indicates the ‘<’ symbol for structure. By default, Struct does not support the ‘<’ operation. If the key is defined, it will generate ‘<’ symbol.

‘key’ details:

• key[Stuct, member…]:

• Struct: indicates the name of the structure

• Member: indicates the member variable of the structure and more than one variable is allowed;

• Implement the comparison between Structs according to the order defined by the member variables in the key.

• After generating ‘<’ operator, the structure can be used as the key of map;

other instructions:

• In the C++ language of Tars, for the structure, two member functions are provided for directly printing out the contents of the structure, which can be used for debugging and logging:

• ostream& display(ostream& _os, int _level=0): directly prints the details of the structure, mainly for debugging;

• ostream& displaySimple(ostream& _os, int _level=0): All member variables are automatically printed in the order separated by

  for logging;

1.4.4. Sequence

The sequence is defined by vector as follows:

vector<int> vi;

1.4.5. Dictionary

The dictionary is defined by map as follows:

map<int, string> m;

Description:

• Struct usually can not be used as the map key because it does not support ‘<’ operation;

• If the struct needs to be used as the map key, you should use key(defined in 2.4.3) to define the comparison order of the members in the struct;

1.4.7 Nesting

Any struct, map, or vector can be nested;

1.5. Interface

The interface is defined as follows, for example:

interface Demo
{
    int get(out vector<map<int, string>> v);
    int set(vector<map<int, string>> v);
};

Description

• indicates output parameters
• After the interface is defined, the code such as synchronous interface and asynchronous interface are generated by an automatic code generation tool (such as tars2cpp).

1.6. Namespace

All structs, interfaces must be in the namespace, for example:

module MemCache
{
    struct key
    {
        0 require string s;
    };

    struct Value
    {
        0 require string s;
    };

    interface MemCacheI
    {
        int get(Key k, out Value v);
        int set(Key k, Value v);
    };
};

Description:

• Namespaces cannot be nested;
• Can reference other namespaces, for example: Demo1::Key

2. Tars Protocol

2.1. Data Encoding

2.1.1. Basic structure

Each piece of data consists of two parts, as shown below:

| Header Information | Actual Data |

The header information includes the following parts:

| Type(4 bits) | Tag 1(4 bits) | Tag 2(1 byte) |

Tag 2 is optional. When the value of Tag does not exceed 14, it only needs to be represented by Tag 1. When the value of Tag exceeds 14 and is less than 256, Tag 1 is fixed to 15 and Tag 2 is used to indicate the value of Tag. . Tag does not allow greater than 255.

‘Type’ indicates the type, which is represented by 4 binary digits. The value ranges from 0 to 15. It is used to identify the type of the data. Different types of data, followed by the actual data length and format are not the same, see the type table.

Tag is represented by Tag 1 and Tag 2. The value ranges from 0 to 255, that is, the field ID of the data in the structure, used to distinguish different fields.

2.1.2. Encoding type table

Note that the types defined here and the types defined by the tars file are two different concepts. The type here is just the type that identifies the data store, not the type of the data definition.

Value	Type	Notes
0	int1	followed by 1 byte integer data
1	int2	followed by 2 bytes of integer data
2	int4	followed by 4 bytes of integer data
3	int8	close to 8 bytes of integer data
4	float	following 4 bytes of floating point data
5	double	following 8 bytes of floating point data
6	String1	Following 1 byte length, followed by content
7	String4	followed by 4 bytes in length, followed by the content
8	Map	Follow an integer data to indicate the size of the Map, followed by the list of [key, value] pairs
9	List	Follow an integer data to represent the size of the List, followed by a list of elements
10	Custom Structure Start	Custom Structure Start Mark
11	Custom structure end	Custom structure end flag, Tag is 0
12	Number 0	indicates the number 0, followed by the data
13	SimpleList	Simple list (currently used in byte array), followed by a type field (currently only supports byte), followed by an integer data representation length, followed by byte data

2.1.3. Detailed description of each type

1.Basic types (including int1, int2, int4, int8, float, double)

The header information is followed by the numeric data. ‘char’ and ‘bool’ are also considered integers. There is no distinction between all integer data, that is, a ‘short’ value can be assigned to an int.

2.Number 0

The header information does not follow the data, indicating a value of 0. The value of 0 for all basic types can be represented as such.

This is because the probability of the occurrence of the number 0 is relatively large, so a type is added separately to save space.

3.String (including String1, String4)

String1 is the length of a byte (the length data does not include header information), followed by the content.

String4 is similar.

4.Map

Immediately following an integer data (including header information) indicates the size of the Map, and then follows the [Key data (Tag is 0), Value data (Tag is 1)] pair list.

5.List

Immediately followed by an integer data (including header information) indicating the size of the List, followed by a list of elements (Tag is 0)

6.Custom structure begins

Custom structure start flag, followed by field data, fields are sorted in ascending order of tags

7.End of custom structure

Custom structure end flag, Tag is 0

2.1.4 Object persistence

Persistence for custom structures is identified by a start and end flags.

For example, the following structure definition:

struct TestInfo
{
    1 require int ii = 34;
    2 optional string s = "abc";
};

struct TestInfo2
{
    1 require TestInfo t;
    2 require int a = 12345;
};

Among them, the default TestInfo2 structure encoding results are:

2.2. Message format

The underlying TUP protocol is completely defined by Tars, which is consistent with the underlying data packet definition of Tars. The required field is the required field of TUP, and optional is the additional field needed to access the Tars service.

2.2.1. Request package

/ / Request the package body
struct RequestPacket
{
    1 require short iVersion; //version number
    2 optional byte cPacketType; //package type
    3 optional int iMessageType; //message type
    4 require int iRequestId; //Request ID
    5 require string sServantName; //servant name
    6 require string sFuncName; / / function name
    7 require vector<byte> sBuffer; //binary buffer
    8 optional int iTimeout; //timeout time (ms)
    9 optional map<string, string> context; //business context
    10 optional map<string, string> status; //framework protocol context
    };

2.2.2. Response package

/ / Response body
struct ResponsePacket
{
    1 require short iVersion; //version number
    2 optional byte cPacketType; //package type
    3 require int iRequestId; / / request ID
    4 optional int iMessageType; //message type
    5 optional int iRet; / / return value
    6 require vector<byte> sBuffer; //binary stream
    7 optional map<string, string> status; //protocol context
    8 optional string sResultDesc; //Result description
};

//return value
const int TAFSERVERSUCCESS = 0; //Server side processing succeeded
const int TAFSERVERDECODEERR = -1; //Server-side decoding exception
const int TAFSERVERENCODEERR = -2; //Server-side encoding exception
const int TAFSERVERNOFUNCERR = -3; //There is no such function on the server side
const int TAFSERVERNOSERVANTERR = -4; //The server does not have the Servant object
const int TAFSERVERRESETGRID = -5; // server grayscale state is inconsistent
const int TAFSERVERQUEUETIMEOUT = -6; // server queue exceeds limit
const int TAFASYNCCALLTIMEOUT = -7; // Asynchronous call timeout
const int TAFINVOKETIMEOUT = -7; //call timeout
const int TAFPROXYCONNECTERR = -8; //proxy link exception
const int TAFSERVEROVERLOAD = -9; //Server overload, exceeding queue length
const int TAFADAPTERNULL = -10; //The client routing is empty, the service does not exist or all services are down.
const int TAFINVOKEBYINVALIDESET = -11; //The client is illegally called by the set rule
const int TAFCLIENTDECODEERR = -12; //Client decoding exception
const int TAFSERVERUNKNOWNERR = -99; //The server is in an abnormal position