HBase, Thrift2 and Erlang on Mac

There are not to many documents showing how Erlang can connect to HBase using Thrift protocol.  The very useful link which was published more than 5 years ago, and it discussed Thrift1.  Based on Lars George's post, Thrift2 will replace Thrift1 eventually.  The following will show what I have done to get Erlang to work with HBase using Thrift on a Mac machine.  It should be similar to get it work on a Linux machine.  Note that only Java is supported as first class citizen for HBase.  If you have the choice, I suggest using Java directly.

1. Download thrift-0.9.0 and follow this tutorial to install it.
   cp -r thrift-0.9.0/lib/erl/*  /usr/local/opt/erlang/lib/erlang/lib/thrift-0.9.0 
   (homebrew installed erlang to /usr/local/opt/erlang.  Find out your own erlang directory.)
   
2. Download latest stable hbase and decompress it.  I installed it to /usr/local/hbase-0.98.6.1-hadoop2, and will refer it as $HBASE_FOLDER.
3. Download hbase.thrift and generate erlang bindings.
   thrift -gen erl hbase.thrift
   It generates erlang bindings in gen-erl folder.
4. start hbase server:
   before starting hbase server, update conf/hbase-site.xml
   <configuration>
     <property>
       <name>hbase.rootdir</name>
       <value>file:///some-folder-hbase</value>
     </property>
     <property>
       <name>hbase.zookeeper.property.dataDir</name>
       <value>/some-folder-zookeeper</value>
     </property>
   </configuration>
   Then start hbase server:
   $HBASE_FOLDER/bin/start-hbase.sh
   
5. start Thrift2:
   $HBASE_FOLDER/bin/base-daemon.sh start thrift2
6. Create table 'ups' with column family 'ui' using HBase Shell (Thrift2 doesn't support create table yet):
   $HBASE_FOLDER/bin/hbase shell
   hbase(main):001:0>; create 'ups', 'ui'
7. Download erlang client file and save it to gen-erl folder.
8. Go to gen-erl folder, compile erlang files and start erlang shell:
   cd gen-erl
   erlc *.erl
   erl 
   1>hbase_thrift2_client:put("localhost", 9090).
   {{tclient,tHBaseService_thrift,
             {protocol,thrift_binary_protocol,
                       {binary_protocol,{transport,thrift_buffered_transport,
                                                   {buffered_transport,{transport,thrift_socket_transport,
                                                                                  {data,#Port<0 data-blogger-escaped-.716="">,infinity}},
                                                                       []}},
                                        true,true}},
             0},
    {ok,ok}}
   2>hbase_thrift2_client:get("localhost", 9090).
   {{tclient,tHBaseService_thrift,
             {protocol,thrift_binary_protocol,
                       {binary_protocol,{transport,thrift_buffered_transport,
                                                   {buffered_transport,{transport,thrift_socket_transport,
                                                                                  {data,#Port<0 data-blogger-escaped-.717="">,infinity}},
                                                                       []}},
                                        true,true}},
             0},
    {ok,{tResult,<<"zhentao-key1">>,
                 [{tColumnValue,<<"ui">>,<<"test">>,<<"xyz1">>,1411075681134,
                                undefined},
                  {tColumnValue,<<"ui">>,<<"test1">>,<<"abc1">>,1411075681134,
                                undefined}]}}}

The detailed erlang project can be found here