grpc-gateway VS buf

it lacks flexibility but i really enjoy grpc-gateway for 99% of my work

https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway

gRPC Gateway is a protoc plugin that reads gRPC service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful JSON API into gRPC.

I don't have any example that's public atm, but the guide in grpc-gateway is pretty clear/can be followed step by step.

https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway

To integrate with Fiber, I used the Fiber Adaptor (also pretty straightforward): https://docs.gofiber.io/api/middleware/adaptor

I wonder if they would be happy with something like this: https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway

Protobuf is used is massively scaled services like firebase. But you'll still see JSON in streamed realtime services like AWS Kinesis. Hopefully google had a return on investment for creating and using this protocol, but it's not hard to prove that it's far from essential. Out of apparent convenience I use grpc-gateway so I can expose both Protobuf and JSON, but honestly I wouldn't do it again

GRPC is an alternative to rest, rest and GRPC both use the http protocol. But you won’t be able to use fetch to call a GRPC endpoint, you should look into setting up a GRPC proxy within the application(hopping you have access to the source code) grpc-gateway. If you don’t have access you’ll have to create a new container that proxies the calls

(There is an option called google.api.http, that lets you set up a URL that can be used to make HTTP/1 REST requests, which get translated to gRPC calls if you're using grpc-gateway as a proxy in front of your service. That has nothing to do with the requests that are made by gRPC clients and servers themselves.)

Have you looked at https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway ?

protoc-gen-grpc-gateway — plugin for creating a gRPC REST API gateway. It allows gRPC endpoints as REST API endpoints and performs the translation from JSON to proto. Basically, you define a gRPC service with some custom annotations and it makes those gRPC methods accessible via REST using JSON requests.

The Buf CLI is a versatile tool designed for handling Protocol Buffers (Protobuf), a method of serializing structured data. It offers several key features, including managing Protobuf assets through the Buf Schema Registry (BSR), providing a linter to enforce optimal API design and structure, and a breaking change detector to maintain compatibility either in source code or at the wire level. Additionally, the Buf CLI includes a generator that activates plugins based on user-defined templates and a formatter to standardize the formatting of Protobuf files according to industry norms. It also integrates seamlessly with the Buf Schema Registry, supporting comprehensive dependency management.

We'll use the Buf CLI as an alternative to protoc so that we can save our generation configuration as YAML. Buf is compatible with protoc plugins.

Not so much anymore! Take a look at buf.build, it makes the whole thing notoriously easy :)

In my opinion it's a good idea, it's the architecture we use at work, and it works well for us. The main limitation to be aware of is that many PaaS don't support gRPC traffic (because of the proxies used). For example, DigitalOcean App Platform or Heroku if I remember correctly. If the way you want to host your backend is OK with HTTP/2 and gRPC traffic, then it's not a limitation. One way around this limitation is to use the gRPC-Web protocol, or the Connect protocol (https://connect.build/). Unfortunately, Dart's gRPC client does not support the gRPC-Web protocol outside the web platform. So for a mobile application, it's not usable at the moment. (If this PR were accepted, it would solve the issue: https://github.com/grpc/grpc-dart/pull/557.) As for Connect, no client is currently offered by Buf for Dart. Don't hesitate if you want to know more. That said, I'd advise you to use the Connect implementation for Go to implement your backend. Connect will enable your server to speak all three protocols (gRPC, gRPC-Web and Connect), which is very useful in the long term. What's more, the code is cleaner, and you benefit from official support for observability with OpenTelemetry. If you don't know Buf (the creators of Connect),I suggest you visit their website: https://buf.build/. :-) Good luck!

As mentioned in the intro, we are going to use Buf and Connect as our tools. We’ll start by installing the dependencies.

gRPC itself is quite nice, especially with buf which makes generating Go code much easier. The rest of the code was in a bad state. Unmaintained router packages, repository pattern without any actual benefit or a repository pattern.

The second big difference is that we now have auto-generated client and server stubs. For this task, I chose to use buf and the protobuf-ts plugin in order to generate idiomatic Typescript classes and objects. Not only do these classes describe the types we'll use in the server and client, but also includes the actual gRPC implementations used to serialize and send messages back and forth across the wire.

Our team has been using Buf (https://buf.build) recently, and they have a nice solution for schema dependency management.

I've found that https://buf.build/ is easier to use than protoc directly.

Consider checking out https://connect.build from https://buf.build. Supports a simpler protocol than grpc-web. Includes a js/ts client for frontend. Then you don’t necessarily need a rest layer, but could leverage the proxy your building.