Services

Services are used to describe client-server protocols, for example network protocols. Client and server can exchange messages of two types: remote procedure casts and remote procedure calls.

Casts are fire and forget: there’s no result or confirmation returned. Calls may return results and/or throw exceptions.

Syntax

service ServiceName
{
    c->s ClientToServerCast(ArgumentType argumentName, ...);
    c->s ClientToServerCall(ArgumentType argumentName, ...) returns (ResultType resultName, ...) throws Exception1, Exception2, ...;

    s->c ServerToClientCast(ArgumentType argumentName, ...);
    s->c ServerToClientCall(ArgumentType argumentName, ...) returns (ResultType resultName, ...) throws Exception1, Exception2, ...;
}

where

• ServiceName is the service name identifier

• ClientToServerCast etc. is the name of the function/message

• ArgumentType and argumentName are type and name of function arguments

• ResultType and resultName are type and name of return arguments

• ExceptionX are exception type names that can be thrown

Both return and throws are optional. If none of them is present, the function is a cast, otherwise it is a call.

There can be an arbitrary number of request and return arguments (comma-separated).

c->s and s->c tokens denote client-to-server and server-to-client messages.