gRPC Basics — Complete Guide

08 Services

11 Authentication

18 Gateway

Introduction to gRPC

Explore gRPC fundamentals including HTTP/2 transport, Protocol Buffers serialization, four RPC types, service definitions, and how gRPC compares to REST for high-performance microservice communication.

Introduction to Protocol Buffers

Learn Protocol Buffers for defining structured data and service interfaces. Understand .proto files, message definitions, field numbering, compilation with protoc, and generated code patterns.

Proto3 Syntax — Complete Guide

Master proto3 syntax rules including package declarations, import statements, message definitions, field types, field numbers, reserved fields, and file-level options for Protocol Buffer files.

Scalar Types in Protocol Buffers

Understand Protocol Buffer scalar types including double, float, int32, int64, uint32, uint64, sint32, sint64, fixed32, fixed64, bool, string, bytes, and their language-specific mappings.

Enums in Protocol Buffers — Complete Guide

Define enumerated types in Protocol Buffers using the enum keyword. Learn enum value numbering, reserved values, allow_alias option, and cross-language enum code generation.

Messages in Protocol Buffers — Complete Guide

Define structured messages in Protocol Buffers using message definitions. Learn field types, repeated fields for lists, map fields for key-value pairs, oneof for mutually exclusive fields, and message nesting.

Nested Types in Protocol Buffers

Organize Protocol Buffer messages with nested types for logical grouping and namespace management. Learn nested message, enum, and oneof definitions and their generated code implications.

RPC Types in gRPC — Complete Guide

Learn the four gRPC RPC types: unary (simple request-response), server-streaming (single request, stream of responses), client-streaming (stream of requests, single response), and bidirectional streaming.

gRPC Interceptors — Complete Guide

Implement gRPC interceptors for cross-cutting concerns like logging, authentication, metrics, tracing, and rate limiting at both client and server sides using unary and stream interceptors.

gRPC Error Handling

Handle errors in gRPC using standard status codes, detailed error messages, error details in metadata, and client-side error handling patterns for both unary and streaming RPCs.

gRPC Deadlines — Complete Guide

Configure gRPC deadlines and timeouts for RPC calls to prevent resource leaks and handle unresponsive services. Learn deadline propagation, client-side and server-side deadline handling.

gRPC Metadata — Complete Guide

Pass key-value metadata with gRPC RPC calls for headers, authentication tokens, tracing IDs, and custom context. Learn metadata construction, sending, reading, and lifecycle in unary and streaming calls.

gRPC Load Balancing — Complete Guide

Configure gRPC load balancing strategies including client-side load balancing, round-robin, pick-first, weighted targets, and integration with service discovery systems like Kubernetes and Consul.

gRPC Reflection — Complete Guide

Enable gRPC server reflection for dynamic service discovery and debugging. Learn server reflection protocol, grpcurl command-line tool, enabling reflection on servers, and building reflection-enabled tooling.

gRPC-Web — Complete Guide

Enable gRPC-Web for browser-to-gRPC communication using the Envoy proxy. Learn gRPC-Web client libraries, proxy configuration, protocol differences from native gRPC, and limitations.

gRPC Testing — Complete Guide

Test gRPC services using unit tests with in-process channels, integration tests with test servers, mock gRPC clients, and gRPC-specific testing utilities for Go, Java, and Node.js.

gRPC Performance Tuning — Complete Guide

Optimize gRPC performance through message size tuning, keepalive configuration, connection pooling, flow control settings, compression, buffer sizing, and benchmarking strategies.

gRPC Project: Build a Complete Service

Build a complete gRPC service integrating proto definitions, all four RPC types, authentication, interceptors, error handling, deadlines, metadata, testing, and performance tuning into a production-ready service.