GRPC Boilerplate

Fully functional boilerplate for running a multiplexed GRPC Server and GRPC Gateway (JSON/REST proxy) over HTTPS, with a Typescript web client.

GRPC is a great way for building web services. Once up and running it offers a developer experience that is convenient and quick to build on, and with the GRPC Gateway you can deliver elegant JSON/HTTP APIs to web clients.

However, getting a new server set up can be rather fiddly, and despite numerous blog posts and walkthroughs it can still take hours of Googling to get it going.

This repo is intended to fast track the set up of new projects.

• https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go
• https://grpc-ecosystem.github.io/grpc-gateway/
• https://grpc-ecosystem.github.io/grpc-gateway/docs/mapping/customizing_openapi_output/

What you get

• A helloworld GRPC Server based on the offical example.
• A GRPC Gateway configured to proxy the same helloworld service.
• A generated Typescript client which talks to the GRPC Gateway, and mimimal page that exercises the client.
• A simple multiplexer that allows both the GRPC Gateway and the GRPC Server to operate on the same port.
• TLS support for the GRPC Gateway, with self-signed local certs.

Setup

1. Fork/clone this repo.
2. Ensure protoc is installed brew install protobuf.
3. Install dependencies make install-deps.
4. Generate SSL certificates make gen-certs for development.
5. Follow instructions to add certs to your key chain.
6. Run the server make run.
7. Make a test request curl 'https://localhost:5050/v1/greeting?name=dan'.
8. Open https://localhost:5050 in your browser, the prompt and alert will make an RPC
9. 🎉🥂

Hopefully that works. Run make help to see information about other commands.

Please submit Pull Requests with corrections or updates.

Code layout

This boilerplate is intended to work best for a multi-language, mono-repo project. Go source files are rooted under go/src/boiler.plate/. I suggest you find-and-replace references to boiler.plate with myawesomeapp.com or whatever.

The main entrypoint can be found at go/src/boiler.plate/cmd/boiler-pate.go.

Proto services defined in protos/ will generate interfaces under go/src/boiler.plate/services/. GRPC allows for service oriented design, even if you deploy as a monolithic binary. We suggest you create granular services such as UserServer defined in user.proto and AuthServer defined in auth.proto.

Contributing

If you find issues or spot possible improvements, please submit a pull-request.