gRPC is a high-performance remote procedure call (RPC) framework that uses Protocol Buffers as its serialization format. It allows for applications to communicate with each other over a network and call methods on a remote server as if they were local.
There are four main types of communication patterns supported by gRPC:
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Unary Communication Unary communication involves a single request from the client to the server and a single response from the server to the client. This is the simplest and most common type of communication pattern in gRPC. Unary communication is useful for simple client-server interactions.
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Server Streaming Communication Server streaming communication involves a single request from the client to the server, but the server sends back a stream of responses. This allows the server to send large amounts of data to the client in a continuous stream. Server streaming communication is useful for real-time updates.
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Client Streaming Communication Client streaming communication involves the client sending a stream of requests to the server, and the server sends back a single response. This pattern is useful when the client needs to send a large amount of data to the server. Client streaming communication can be used for uploading large files.
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Bidirectional Streaming Communication Bidirectional streaming communication involves both the client and the server sending streams of messages to each other. This allows for real-time communication and is useful for scenarios where both the client and server need to send and receive data continuously. Bidirectional streaming communication can be used for real-time collaboration between clients and servers.
Each of these communication patterns provides different possibilities for building distributed systems. By choosing the appropriate pattern for a given scenario, developers can create efficient and scalable systems using gRPC.