gRPC Tutorial — Fast Internal Communication

gRPC for communication between microservices. Protocol Buffers, streaming and examples in Node.js.

Why gRPC?¶

• ~10x faster serialization (Protobuf vs JSON)
• HTTP/2 multiplexing
• Bi-directional streaming
• Generated clients from definition

Proto Definition¶

syntax = "proto3";

service OrderService {
    rpc CreateOrder (CreateOrderRequest) returns (Order);
    rpc ListOrders (ListRequest) returns (stream Order);
}

message Order {
    string id = 1;
    string customer_id = 2;
    double total = 3;
    string status = 4;
}

Node.js Implementation¶

// Server
const grpc = require('@grpc/grpc-js');
const proto = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(protoLoader.loadSync('order.proto'));
const server = new grpc.Server();

server.addService(proto.order.OrderService.service, {
    createOrder: (call, cb) => {
        const order = { id: genId(), ...call.request, status: 'CREATED' };
        cb(null, order);
    }
});

server.bindAsync('0.0.0.0:50051', grpc.ServerCredentials.createInsecure(), () => {});

Summary¶

gRPC is excellent for internal services. For public APIs, stick with REST/GraphQL.

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