A prototype to see if gRPC would be a valid tool to help with Cardano test frameworks.
This project consists of two services - a client and a server. These communicate over gRPC and implement functions over cardano-cli. The server should be placed in an environment that contains an instance of cardano-cli and cardano-node. The server has several rpc methods that allow you to run commands from the client. You can launch a server by running server -p 50005 if you have the stand-alone executable and there is a dummy client to test this with by running client -p 50005.
- Golang 1.15
- Protobuf Compiler 3.0
Installation notes can be found here https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/
./proto-gen.sh compiles .proto files
./run-server.sh <port> and ./run-client.sh <port> runs a server and client.
./build-server.sh and ./build-client.sh builds a server and client.
There are five key files.
./internal/proto-files/service/node-service.proto./internal/grpc/service/node-service.pb.go./internal/grpc/impl/node-service.go./cmd/grpc/server/main.go./cmd/grpc/client/main.go
node-service.proto contains the data structures and gRPC methods that you want to have. By compiling these with ./proto-gen.sh, node-service.pb.go is generated and used by both the client and server. Note then that the node-service.proto is coupled between the two services. On the server, node-service.go implements the methods in node-service.proto and this is then registered in server/main.go. client/main.go has a copy of node-service.pb.go so that it knows what methods are available and what data types they require/respond wtih, but no other details are expected.
Therefore to extend this project with a new gRPC method, you would need to add it to node-service.proto along with its request and response arguments types (a string is acceptable!). Compiling this with ./proto-gen.sh will create a Golang file however you can install a different proto compiler to generate other languages. Following this, you would need to implement the function in node-service.go as per the other methods already there. Finally, you would want to add this function to client/main.go so that you can use it.