gRPC

Status: draft · Confidence: medium (0.635) · Basis: verified_sources

Quality notes: generic_source_homepage, no_verified_sources, partial_source_verification

## TL;DR

gRPC is a high-performance RPC framework developed by Google (2015, graduated CNCF). It uses Protocol Buffers (protobuf) for binary serialization and HTTP/2 for transport, supporting unary, server-streaming, client-streaming, and bidirectional streaming. gRPC inter-service communication is the backbone of microservices at Google, Netflix, and Square.

## Core Explanation

Protobuf `.proto` files define service and message types. gRPC generates client/server code in 12+ languages. Streaming modes: unary (single request/response), server streaming, client streaming, bidirectional. Compared to REST: faster (binary, no JSON parsing), strongly typed, but harder to debug (needs grpcurl). gRPC-Web bridges gRPC to browsers.

## Further Reading

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## Related Articles

- [gRPC: Protocol Buffers, HTTP/2 Streaming, and Service Contracts](../grpc-protocol-buffers-http-2-streaming-and-service-contracts.md)