rfoo (remote foo) is a fast Python RPC package which can do 160,000 RPC calls per second on a regular PC. It includes a fast serialization module called rfoo.marsh which extends the Python built in marshal module by eliminating serialization of code objects and protecting against bad input. The result is a safe to use ultra fast serializer.

Included with rfoo is rconsole, a remote Python console with auto completion, which can be used to inspect and modify the namespace of a running script. Scroll down for more information.

Interface of rfoo.marsh:

rfoo.marsh.dumps(expression)
rfoo.marsh.loads(binary_string)

Serve RPC method to clients:

class MyHandler(rfoo.BaseHandler):
    def echo(self, str):
        return str

rfoo.InetServer(MyHandler).start(port=50000)

Call method on RPC server:

c = rfoo.InetConnection().connect(port=50000)
rfoo.Proxy(c).echo('Hello, world!')

To send RPC notifications replace the Proxy class with the Notifier class. Notifications are calls which do not return a value and are an order of magnitude faster than synchronous calls.

Benchmarks off a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo laptop:

• Create-call-close 4000 connections per second per process.
• Up to 30,000 calls per second per process with INET sockets.
• Up to 45,000 calls per second per process with Unix sockets.
• Up to 160,000 notifications per second per process with INET sockets.

Notes:

• Tested on GNU/Linux, Python 2.x, 3.x.
• Server and client can be either Python 2.x or 3.x but not mixed.
• Used in production server.

How to Install

Note it is impossible to install rfoo with easy_install or pip because of a conflict between setuptools and Cython (http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2007-September/008204.html).

rfoo depends on Cython (http://cython.org/). You also need a C compiler and the python development package to be present on the system. On Ubuntu you can take care of all those prerequisites with the following command:

sudo apt-get install cython python-dev build-essential

On CentOS or Redhat do the following:

sudo yum install gcc python-devel python-setuptools
sudo easy_install Cython

Next, download the source of rfoo and install with:

sudo python setup.py install

rconsole

rconsole is a remote Python console with auto completion, which can be used to inspect and modify the namespace of a running script.

To invoke in a script do:

from rfoo.utils import rconsole
rconsole.spawn_server()

To attach from a shell do:

$ rconsole

Security note: The rconsole listener started with spawn_server() will accept any local connection and may therefore be insecure to use in shared hosting or similar environments!