srinivas-ramu / grpc

gRPC is an open-source remote procedure call framework created by Google in 2016.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐚 𝐠𝐑𝐏𝐂?

📖 gRPC is an open-source remote procedure call framework created by Google in 2016.

A local procedure call is a function call in a process to execute code. gRPC is a popular RPC implementation.

The core of this ecosystem uses 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐨𝐥 𝐁𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐬 as its data exchange format.

💡Protocol Buffers is a language-agnostic and platform-agnostic mechanism for encoding structured data.

By default, gRPC uses Protocol Buffers to encode and send data.

While gRPC can support other encoding formats, such as 𝐉𝐒𝐎𝐍, Protocol Buffers offer several advantages that make it the encoding format of choice for gRPC.

Protocol Buffers support 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐲-𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐝 schema. The data structure is defined in a proto file.

📌A gRPC service is also defined in a 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 by specifying RPC method parameters and return types.

The same tool generates gRPC client and server code from the proto file.

Developers use these generated classes on the client to make RPC calls and on the server to make RPC requests.

With support for many programming languages, the client and server can independently choose the correct programming language and ecosystem for their specific use cases.

💪🏻 The reason for the popularity of gRPC is its high performance. Two factors contribute to its performance.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 is Protocol Buffers are a very efficient binary encoding format. It is much faster than JSON.

𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝, gRPC is built on top of HTTP/2 to deliver high performance at scale.

📌There are many advantages to using HTTP/2.

This allows 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 to be sent over a long-lived TCP connection.

This allows the gRPC framework to handle many simultaneous RPC calls over a 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐂𝐏 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 between clients and servers.

😞 No browser currently provides the level of control over web requests required to support a gRPC client.

It is possible to make gRPC calls from the browser with the help of a proxy. This technology is called gRPC-Web.

So, where does gRPC shine, and when should we use it?

👬 gRPC is an 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫-𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 mechanism chosen between 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 in data centers.

📱Its efficiency and performance are very meaningful in environments with limited energy and bandwidth, which are 𝐦𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬.