Providence CLI Tool : Data Converter

The data converter pvd is a small program that can read a thrift IDL, and a binary (or non-binary) serialized data file that follows that IDL structure, and the output the result in some form of readable (or other binary) data format. As for example:

Given the thrift IDL in thrift/test.thrift:

struct MyData {
  1: string text
  2: i32 sequence
  3: list<string> tags
}

And a binary file with a set of data entries in test.MyData format. We could do something like this:

cat test.data | pvd -I thrift/ test.MyData

And should make the output:

{
  "text": "not a test at all",
  "sequence": 144
}
{
  "text": "test 2",
  "tags": [
    "first",
    "second"
  ]
}

Input and output can be specified to point directly to files (no shell piping needed), and the input and output serialization format can be specified too.

pvd -i fast_binary,file:test.data -o pretty -I thrift/ test.MyData

Which should read the data file serialized with the FastBinarySerializer format and print it out with the simple "pretty printer" format.