gRPC

gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Calls[2]) is a cross-platform open source high performance remote procedure call (RPC) framework. gRPC was initially created by Google, which used a single general-purpose RPC infrastructure called Stubby to connect the large number of microservices running within and across its data centers from about 2001.[3] In March 2015, Google decided to build the next version of Stubby and make it open source. The result was gRPC, which is now used in many organizations aside from Google to power use cases from microservices to the “last mile” of computing (mobile, web, and Internet of Things). It uses HTTP/2 for transport, Protocol Buffers as the interface description language, and provides features such as authentication, bidirectional streaming and flow control, blocking or nonblocking bindings, and cancellation and timeouts. It generates cross-platform client and server bindings for many languages. Most common usage scenarios include connecting services in a microservices style architecture, or connecting mobile device clients to backend services.[4]

gRPC
Developer(s)Google
Initial releaseAugust 2016 (2016-08)
Stable release
1.57.0[1] / August 9, 2023 (2023-08-09)
Repository
Written inAndroid Java, C#, C++, Dart, Go, Java, Kotlin/JVM, Node.js, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby
TypeRemote procedure call framework
LicenseApache License 2.0
Websitegrpc.io

gRPC's complex use of HTTP/2 makes it impossible to implement a gRPC client in the browser, instead requiring a proxy.[5]

Authentication

gRPC supports the usage of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and token-based authentication. Connection to Google services must use TLS. There are two types of credentials: channel credentials and call credentials. For token-based authorization, gRPC provides Server Interceptor [6] and a Client Interceptor.[7]

Encoding
Main article: Protocol Buffers

gRPC uses Protocol Buffers to encode data. Contrary to REST APIs with JSON, they have a more strict specification. Due to having a single specification, gRPC eliminates debate and saves developer time because gRPC is consistent across platforms and implementations.[8]

Testing

Some of the software tools used for testing gRPC implementations include Postman, ezy[9], Insomnia, and Step CI.[10]

Adoption

A number of different organizations have adopted gRPC, such as Uber,[11] Square, Netflix, IBM, CoreOS, Docker, CockroachDB, Arista Networks, Cisco, Juniper Networks,[12] Spotify,[13] Zalando,[14] Dropbox,[15] and Google as the original developer.

The open source project u-bmc uses gRPC to replace Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).[16] On 8 January 2019, Dropbox announced that the next version of "Courier", their RPC framework at the core of their service-oriented architecture (SOA), would be migrated to be based on gRPC, primarily because it aligned well with their existing custom RPC frameworks.[17]

Alternatives to gRPC

See also

References
  1. "gRPC releases". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  2. "FAQ". gRPC.
  3. "gRPC: a true internet-scale RPC framework is now 1.0 and ready for production deployments". 24 August 2016. Retrieved 2023-04-03.
  4. "About gRPC". gRPC. Retrieved 2021-05-25.
  5. "The state of gRPC in the browser". gRPC. 8 January 2019.
  6. "gRPC Server Interceptor".
  7. "gRPC". grpc.io. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
  8. JamesNK. "Compare gRPC services with HTTP APIs". docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
  9. "ezy on GitHub".
  10. "Step CI Documentation".
  11. "gRPC at Uber". 19 May 2021.
  12. "gRPC". grpc.io. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
  13. "gRPC at Spotify" (PDF). jfokus.se. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
  14. "Zalando Tech Radar". opensource.zalando.com. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  15. "How we migrated Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy". Dropbox.Tech. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  16. "u-bmc". GitHub.com. 5 October 2022.
  17. Nigmatullin, Ruslan; Ivanov, Alexey (2019-01-08). "Courier: Dropbox migration to gRPC". Retrieved 2019-01-09.
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