Thrift is a software framework for scalable cross-language services development. It combines a powerful software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby. Thrift was developed at Facebook and released as open source.
Thrift is now a project in the Apache Incubator.
http://incubator.apache.org/thrift/
Overview
Thrift allows you to define data types and service interfaces in a simple definition file. Taking that file as input, the compiler generates code to be used to easily build RPC clients and servers that communicate seamlessly across programming languages.
Thrift is one of Facebook's core software engineering resources. It is used in various ways across many products, including: Search, Mobile, Posts, Notes, Feed, Platform. If you use the site, you've used Thrift.