description gRPC Stack Overview
Developed at Google and publicly released in 2015, gRPC is an open-source framework for remote procedure calls, allowing one service to invoke an operation on another. It commonly uses Protocol Buffers to define service contracts and serialize messages. HTTP/2 provides multiplexed connections and supports streaming, while binary messages offer an alternative to exchanging text-based data between services. Generated client and server code lets multiple programming languages work against strongly typed interfaces.
This makes gRPC useful for distributed services whose teams need explicit agreements about requests and responses, including systems that exchange streams of messages. Its defining trait is the close link between a service definition and the code used to call it.
help gRPC Stack FAQ
What must be defined in a gRPC .proto file?
A Protocol Buffers file defines message structures and service methods, including their request and response types. The protoc tool and language-specific plugins can then generate client stubs and server interfaces for languages such as Go, Java, Python, and C#.
What streaming patterns does gRPC support?
gRPC supports unary calls, server streaming, client streaming, and bidirectional streaming. Its use of HTTP/2 allows multiple streams to share a connection while preserving an ordered sequence of messages within each RPC stream.
Why can gRPC be awkward to call directly from a web browser?
Browsers do not expose all the low-level HTTP/2 behavior expected by native gRPC clients. Browser applications commonly use gRPC-Web with a compatible proxy or server layer, and its streaming capabilities differ from those of native gRPC.
When is a REST API easier to use than gRPC?
REST is often easier for public APIs that should be callable with ordinary HTTP tools and readable JSON. gRPC is especially attractive for typed service-to-service communication, compact binary messages, generated clients, and streaming.
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