GRPC-PROTOBUF-DETAIL

Google RPC HTTP/2 + Protobuf.

Definition

gRPC basis: Protocol Buffers v3 (.proto file), auto-generation of client/server stubs for ~12 languages (C++, Java, Python, Go, Node.js, Ruby, C#, Objective-C, PHP, Dart, Kotlin, Swift). HTTP/2 transport (multiplexing, header compression, server push). Additional bindings: gRPC-Web (browser), gRPC-Gateway (REST<->gRPC). Maintained by CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation).

Origin

gRPC published open-source by Google February 2015 ; donated to CNCF March 2017 ; v1.0 published August 2016.

Example in context

Netflix uses gRPC for ~10000 internal microservices ; unary and streaming communication for real-time metrics, latency gain vs REST/JSON.

Related terms

• GraphQL — modern competitor.