I want to expose proto file for clients through HTTP as REST endpoint. I want to call this endpoint and get a raw proto file. Can I do this with gRPC.serveHTTP or not? Maybe you can advise some better ways to share a proto file with clients. Thanks!
VMois
All 13 comments
I'm trying to do something similar. My goal is to enable clients to connect to the service without having to have the proto file baked in to their own source. From my limited understanding of gRPC, reflection would be the idiomatic way of doing this. However, it seems that reflection is not implemented in grpc-node at this time (https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/2568).
ghost
on 25 Nov 2017
@VMois @Lange
Have you been able to achieve this yet? We are looking to do something similar.
kashifmin
on 24 Apr 2019
@kashifmin No, I unfortunately have not. I've given up on pursuing this for now.
ghost
on 24 Apr 2019
@kashifmin No, also gave up.
VMois
on 25 Apr 2019
Does this ticket aim to track the support of reflection on the server, client, or both? Is it already somehow possible to invoke the reflection service from Node.js clients?
stefanobaghino-da
on 12 May 2019
We don't have any reflection support at the moment, neither from the client or the server. That being said, the ticket is mainly aimed at tracking server side reflection. Client side should be doable manually using the reflection protocol.
nicolasnoble
on 12 May 2019
Thinking about it more, I realized that I just said something stupid: both client and server are doable with no change in the core packages. In fact, we probably should build these as new packages.
nicolasnoble
on 12 May 2019
Yeah, I'm studying how the whole thing works. Seems like client-side support is easily attainable by generating the code for the reflection protocol. Do you think this could be simply made into its own package without any addition?
Server-side instead would need a full implementation of the protocol, right?
I'd say it's probably better to have two different packages, one for clients and one for servers. Does this make sense?
stefanobaghino-da
on 12 May 2019
Yes, this makes sense. Both should be doable without any addition.
nicolasnoble
on 13 May 2019
Regarding the server, what do you mean "without addition"? I assumed you would have had to somehow implement the reflection protocol.
stefanobaghino-da
on 13 May 2019
AFAIK, the reflection protocol is just a normal RPC. So you don't need to do anything special in the existing grpc code. You can simply add the appropriate RPC route for it to a server object taken as a constructor argument for instance.
nicolasnoble
on 13 May 2019
any progress?
dinfer
on 25 Mar 2020
Reflection really creates barrier for entry. Do we have any chance yet?
AliArdaOrhan
on 18 Dec 2020
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Most helpful comment
I'm trying to do something similar. My goal is to enable clients to connect to the service without having to have the proto file baked in to their own source. From my limited understanding of gRPC, reflection would be the idiomatic way of doing this. However, it seems that reflection is not implemented in grpc-node at this time (https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/2568).