Local Run

This guide gets you started with gRPC Mate with a simple working example.

Prerequisites

Make sure Server Reflection is enabled on gRPC target server side.

• For server written in Java, refer to this guide

• For server written in Go, refer to this guide

For demonstration, we start the gRPC example server with reflection enabled provided at https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/tree/master/examples/features/reflection

$ go run server/main.go
server listening at [::]:50051

Run gRPC Mate

It’s really simple to run. Let’s connect to the gRPC server started above as an example, using docker or command built from source.

Run gRPC Mate via Docker

$ docker run --name grpc-mate -e GRPC_MATE_PROXIED_HOST=<your grpc server local IP> -e GRPC_MATE_PROXIED_PORT=50051 -dp 6600:6600 gdong/grpc-mate

Note above GRPC_MATE_PROXIED_HOST has to be set to your IP address other than localhost, so that grpc-mate running inside docker can access it.

Run gRPC Mate directly

$ GRPC_MATE_PROXIED_PORT=50051 ./grpc-mate

This by default listens on 6600 as HTTP port, and connects to a local gRPC server running at localhost:50051

To connect to other gRPC server host and port, refer to the configuration section.

Introspecting Services

Now try get http://localhost:6600/actuator/services, you will see all services the server exposes, as well as their enclosing methods, input and output types, e.g. one element of services:

      {  
         "name":"helloworld.Greeter",
         "methods":[  
            {  
               "name":"SayHello",
               "input":"helloworld.HelloRequest",
               "output":"helloworld.HelloReply",
               "route":"/helloworld.Greeter/SayHello"
            }
         ]
      }

It also has request/response JSON templates, convenient for construcing HTTP and JSON requests, e.g. one element of types:

      {  
         "name":"helloworld.HelloRequest",
         "template":{  
            "name":""
         }
      }

Making Requests

Now let’s try making gRPC requests using above inspected information

$ curl -X POST -d '{"name":"gdong42"}' "http://localhost:6600/v1/helloworld.Greeter/SayHello" 
{"message":"Hello gdong42"}

Above we invoked SayHello method of helloworld.Greeter service, with JSON message of helloworld.HelloRequest type, and got a JSON message of helloworld.HelloReply type.

Note the HTTP method is POST, the body is a JSON string, and the request path is of pattern /v1/{serviceName}/{methodName}.