Book Image

Practical gRPC

By : Joshua B. Humphries, David Konsumer, David Muto, Robert Ross, Carles Sistare
Book Image

Practical gRPC

By: Joshua B. Humphries, David Konsumer, David Muto, Robert Ross, Carles Sistare

Overview of this book

While building systems that contain several components, you need a framework that is fast and has minimal network overhead. gRPC is one such open-source tool that is quickly becoming popular and gaining popularity with programmers. Practical gRPC introduces you to gRPC and explains how it compares and contrasts with similar technologies. You’ll be introduced to key technologies such as Protocol Buffers, and work your way up from basic gRPC usage, all the way through to its more advanced capabilities. You’ll learn the best practices for defining and evolving your gRPC APIs, and discover how different tools can be leveraged to get the most out of gRPC and even extend it. By the end of this book, you'll have all the information you need to get started building systems with gRPC.

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Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Preface
Who is this book for?
Free Chapter
1
1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Computer networks and distributed computing
Request-response protocols
Remote Procedure Calls
Summary
2
2. What is gRPC?
2. What is gRPC?
HTTP and REST
RPC systems
Streaming
Where to use gRPC
Summary
3
3. What are Protocol Buffers?
3. What are Protocol Buffers?
Scalar types
Nested types
Maps
Oneof
Enums
Services
Repetitive fields go first
Polymorphism
Packages
Versioning proto files
Different approaches for generating proto classes
Understand encoding
Summary
4
4. gRPC basics
4. gRPC basics
Vocabulary
Creating and Implementing Services
Exposing services
Creating and using stubs
Errors
Metadata
Summary
5
5. Star Friends
5. Star Friends
Before writing code
Nouns
Verbs
Getting the data
Defining the Service
Server Implmentation
Starting it up
Summary
6
6. Streaming gRPC calls
6. Streaming gRPC calls
Server streaming
Client streaming
Bidirectional streaming
Summary
7
7. Advanced gRPC
7. Advanced gRPC
Error management
Interceptors
Authentication
RPC Timeouts
Call cancellation
Summary
8
8. HTTP2 overview
8. HTTP2 overview
HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1
Frames
Messages
Streams
Multiplexing
Flow control
Server push
Headers
9
9. Load balancing
9. Load balancing
Client load balancing
Proxy load balancing
Summary
10
10. Service evolution with gRPC
10. Service evolution with gRPC
Binary and source compatibility
Maintaining wire compatibility
Behavior compatibility
Summary
11
11. Extending gRPC services
11. Extending gRPC services
gRPC Gateway
Summary
12
12. Debugging gRPC
12. Debugging gRPC
CLI tools
An example
Environment variables
Decompiling protobuf messages
Summary

Where to use gRPC

So now you know that gRPC is a request-response protocol for streaming RPC that uses Protocol Buffers to define interfaces and messages. But, what about where or why you would use gRPC, or what programming languages can be used with gRPC.

The “where” is pretty easy: you can leverage gRPC almost anywhere you have two computers communicating over a network:

  1. Microservices: gRPC shines as a way to connect servers in service-oriented environments. One of the original problems its predecessor, Stubby, aimed to solve was wiring together microservices. It is well-suited for a wide variety of arenas: from medium and large enterprises systems all the way to “web-scale” eCommerce and SaaS offerings.
  2. Client-Server Applications: gRPC works just as well in client-server applications, where the client application runs on desktop or mobile devices. It uses HTTP/2, which improves on HTTP 1.1 in both latency and network utilization. This means you get improved...
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