any good and simple RPC library for inter-process calls? [closed]

Answer 1

You might like ZeroMQ for something like this. Perhaps not as much a complete RPC, as a raw byte messaging framework you could use to make an RPC. It's simple, lightweight and with an impressive performance. You can easilly implement an RPC on top of it. Here's an example server straight from the manual:

//
//  Hello World server in C++
//  Binds REP socket to tcp://*:5555
//  Expects "Hello" from client, replies with "World"
//
#include <zmq.hpp>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main () {
    //  Prepare our context and socket
    zmq::context_t context (1);
    zmq::socket_t socket (context, ZMQ_REP);
    socket.bind ("tcp://*:5555");

    while (true) {
        zmq::message_t request;

        //  Wait for next request from client
        socket.recv (&request);
        printf ("Received Hello");

        //  Do some 'work'
        sleep (1);

        //  Send reply back to client
        zmq::message_t reply (5);
        memcpy ((void *) reply.data (), "World", 5);
        socket.send (reply);
    }
    return 0;
}

This example uses tcp://*.5555, but uses more efficient IPC techniques if you use:

socket.bind("ipc://route.to.ipc");

or even faster inter thread protocol:

socket.bind("inproc://path.for.client.to.connect");

Answer 2

There's also Microsoft Messaging Queueing, which is fairly straightforward to use when all processes are on the local machine.

Answer 3

The simplest solution for interprocess-communication is to use the filesystem. Requests and responses can be written as temp files. You can work out a naming convention for request and response files.

This will not give you the best performance, but maybe it will be good enough.

Answer 4

I know that we are far away from easy to use. But of course you can stick to CORBA. E.g. ACE/TAO

Answer 5

If you only need to support Windows I'd use the Windows built-in RPC, I've written two introductory articles about this:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/rpcintro1.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/rpcintro2.aspx

You could use the ncalrpc protocol if you only need local inter-process communication.

Answer 6

If you are working on windows only, and really need a C++ interface, use COM/DCOM. It is based on RPC (in turn based on DCE RPC).

It is extremely simple to use -- provided you take the time to learn the basics.

• ATL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3ax346b7(VS.71).aspx
• Interface Definition Language: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367091(VS.85).aspx