GRPC Web Concept

Introduction

The app was built as a POC of how a web front end can connect to a gRPC server via a gateway proxy

The aim is to have the web front end be able to communicate to the gRPC server using RESTful endpoints

The proxy/intermediary will then handle conversion to and from gRPC calls for the REST calls received

Approach

The ere are two possible approaches to this

1. Create a gRPC proxy using Go Multiplexer server to expose RESTful API endpoints
2. Create a gRPC client using Node and use express to create RESTful API endpoints

Prerequisites

1. Install protoc
2. Install buf - Helps generate APIs from protocol buffers
3. Install GoLang - Runs the MUX proxy server
4. Install node js

Instructions

1. Install the NPM packages. Run npm install
2. To start the gRPC server, execute the command npm run start:grpc-server
   • This will expose the server in the endpoint http:\\localhost:30043
3. To start the go proxy server, execute the command go run proxy/main.go
   • This exposes the proxy server for RESTful calls in http:\\localhost:8081
   • Try accessing the endpoint http:\\localhost:8081\v1\products in your browser or postman. A list of products should be displayed
4. To start the gRPC Node client, execute the command npm run start:grpc-client