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.

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Small book image
Practical gRPC
Joshua B. Humphries | David Konsumer | David Muto | Robert Ross | Carles Sistare
Nov, 2019 | 169 pages
Small book image
gRPC Go for Professionals
Clément Jean
Jul, 2023 | 260 pages
Small book image
Microservices Communication in .NET Using gRPC
Fiodar Sazanavets
Feb, 2022 | 486 pages
Small book image
Hands-On RESTful Web Services with Go
Naren Yellavula
Feb, 2020 | 404 pages
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

Chapter 9. Load balancing

One of the common issues when it comes to scalability is how to balance the load all over the servers intended to ingest the incoming and growing traffic. Plenty of proxies are intended to do so for HTTP/1.x natively, but since HTTP/2 is a binary protocol, instead of plain text, they will need other plugins to achieve it.

In addition to proxy solutions, gRPC proposes client load balancing, where the clients somehow know about the backend configuration and they dispatch the messages directly to the servers in a proper and intelligent way.

Which solution should you adopt between client and proxy load balancing? Well, it depends on the context of your application. We’ll try to figure out which are the advantages and disadvantages of each option and let you decide what is your optimal configuration.

Previous Section
End of Section 1
Next Section