Four Ways of Integrating gRPC into your Node.js Project

This project contains the source code for my Medium article gRPC with Node - Four Ways of Integrating gRPC into your Node.js.

The project consists for four subfolders: dynamic, static, typed, and modern, which are briefly described in the following sections.

All variants use the simplest possible protocol specification hello.proto:

syntax = "proto3";

service Greeter {
  rpc sayHello(HelloRequest) returns (HelloReply) {}
}

message HelloRequest {
  string name = 1;
}

message HelloReply {
  string message = 1;
}

The client passes a simple HelloRequest object with a name to the server; the server replies with a HelloReply object with a message "Hello <name>".

1. Dynamic Generation with proto-loader

As the name suggests, this variant does not require a build step. The .proto file is included into the target applications at runtime. A protocol loader generates the service descriptors and client stubs on the fly.

cd ./dynamic
npm install
npm run server

In another shell:

npm run client

2. Static Generation with grpc-tools

Static code generation requires the protocol buffer compiler protoc with built-in support for JavaScript. The generation of gRPC service descriptors and client stubs additionally needs package grpc-tools, which comes with protoc and all necessary plugins.

cd ./static
npm install
npm build
npm run server

The corresponding client can be started in another shell as in the first variant.

3. Type Signature Generation with protoc-gen-grpc

An alternative to grpc-tools is protoc-gen-grpc, which adds support for generating TypeScript signatures.

cd ./typed
npm install
npm build
npm run server

The corresponding client can be started in another shell as in the first variant.

4. Native TypeScript Generation with ts-proto

The three variants discussed so far use the built-in JavaScript generation of protoc. Project ts-proto goes a different way and replaces the built-in CommonJS code generation by a generator that outputs idiomatic TypeScript.

cd ./modern
npm install
npm build
npm run server

The corresponding client can be started in another shell as in the first variant.