gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Calls) is a

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

open source high performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework. gRPC was initially created by Google, which has used a single general-purpose RPC infrastructure called Stubby to connect the large number of microservices running within and across its data centers for over a decade. 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 outside of Google to power use cases from microservices to the “last mile” of computing (mobile, web, and Internet of Things). It uses

HTTP/2 HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was derived from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google. HTTP/2 was developed by the HTTP Working ...

for transport,

Protocol Buffers Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs to communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an inte ...

as the

interface description language interface description language or interface definition language (IDL), is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs describe an inter ...

, 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 A microservice architecture – a variant of the service-oriented architecture structural style – is an architectural pattern that arranges an application as a collection of loosely-coupled, fine-grained services, communicating through ligh ...

style architecture, or connecting mobile device clients to backend services. gRPC's complex use of HTTP/2 makes it impossible to implement a gRPC client in the browser, instead requiring a proxy.

Authentication

gRPC supports the usage of 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 and a Client Interceptor.

Encoding

gRPC uses

to encode data. Contrary to REST APIs with

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...

, 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.

Adoption

A number of different organizations have adopted gRPC, such as

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pack ...

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

, IBM,

CoreOS Container Linux (formerly CoreOS Linux) is a discontinued open-source lightweight operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed for providing infrastructure to clustered deployments, while focusing on automation, ease of application ...

, Docker,

CockroachDB CockroachDB is a commercial distributed SQL database management system, developed by Cockroach Labs. History Cockroach Labs was founded in 2015 by ex-Google employees Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis, and Ben Darnell. Cockroach Labs founders K ...

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

Zalando Zalando SE is a publicly traded German online retailer of shoes, fashion and beauty. The company was founded in 2008 by David Schneider and Robert Gentz and has more than 50 million active users in 25 European markets. Zalando is active in a vari ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2 ...

, and Google as the original developer. The open source project u-bmc uses gRPC to replace IPMI. On 8 January 2019,

announced that the next version of "Courier", their RPC framework at the core of their

service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided ...

(SOA), would be migrated to be based on gRPC, primarily because it aligned well with their existing custom RPC frameworks.

References

External links

gRPC Home PagegRPC – github.comgRPC – opensource.google.com
Remote procedure call Software using the BSD license Google software {{google-stub

Authentication

Encoding

Adoption

See also

Some alternatives to gRPC

References

External links