grpc-web VS vike

* Additionally, client can stream data to the backend server (if bidirectional GRPC streams are used). I.e. client sends WebSocket messages, those will be transformed to GRPC messages by WebSocket server and delivered to the application backend.

As a result we have a system which allows to quickly create individual streams by using strict GRPC contract but terminating connections over WebSocket transport. So it works well in web browsers. After that no need to write WebSocket protocol, client implementation, handle WebSocket connection. This all will be solved by a suggested WebSocket server and its client SDKs.

The mechanics is similar to Websocketd (https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd), but instead of creating OS processes we create GRPC streams. The difference from grpc-web (https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web) is that we provide streaming capabilities but not exposing GRPC contract to the client - just allowing to stream any data as payload (both binary and text) with some wrappers from our client SDKs side for managing subscriptions. I.e. it's not native GRPC streams on the client side - we expose just Connection/Subscription object to stream in both directions. GRPC streams used only for communication between WebSocket server and backend. To mention - grpc-web does not support all kinds of streaming now (https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web#streaming-support) while proposed solution can. This all should provide a cross-platform way to quickly write streaming apps due to client SDKs and language-agnostic nature of GRPC.

I personally see both pros and cons in this scheme (without concentrating on both too much here to keep the question short). I spent some time thinking about this myself, already have some working prototypes – but turned out need more opinions before moving forward with the idea and releasing this, kinda lost in doubts.

My main question - whether this seems interesting for someone here? Do you find this useful and see practical value?

By default, web browsers do not support gRPC, but we will use gRPC-web to make it possible.

You just have to use a library implementation for JavaScript https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web

TypeScript support remains an experimental feature of gRPC.

The gRPC-Web protocol supports HTTP/1 and can be used from a browser.

-- grpc-web

gRPC is mainly used in server-to-server communication, but it can also be used in client-to-server communication. gRPC-web is a gRPC implementation for web browsers. It is a JavaScript library that allows you to call gRPC services from a web browser. It supports Unary and Streaming Server API calls.

Since we're using Envoy, there's one more neat trick that we can employ. It turns out that Envoy also support gRPC-Web out of the box, a JavaScript client designed to support gRPC communication from the browser! That means that we can send gRPC messages over HTTP/1.1 as base64 encoded strings or as binary protobufs. Messages will be sent through our proxy and on to our backend service. The advantage of this is smaller and more efficient wire communication which should lead to better performance.

protoc-gen-grpc-web — a plugin that allows our front end to communicate with the backend using gRPC calls. A separate blog post on this coming up in the future.

Here are some collected notes of the distinctions between SSRx, Vinxi and Vike, to share with anyone else searching the web. Since my Google search came up empty, and I had to ask around on Twitter/X and GitHub to find out.

We're working on exactly this. You can already do this with Triplit but it's challenging to make an out of the box solution because each framework passes context/data different from server to client differently. There's a cool project called [Vike](https://github.com/vikejs/vike) that generalizes this pattern across SSR'd UI frameworks

Anyone have experience with https://github.com/vikejs/vike?

have you seen https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/ ? i've only browsed their docs, but AFAICT their pitch that it's a more DIY approach to a framework, where you keep a lot of control over how things are wired together.

I agree and, as the author of vite-plugin-ssr[1], that's what I recommend to my users: go for static whenever you can.

I think it's something every web developer should be aware of. Static is indeed a lot simpler than dynamic.

I've wrote more about it over here[2] (SSG = static, SSR = dynamic).

[1]: https://vite-plugin-ssr.com

Maybe vite-plugin-ssr? It's pretty unopinionated and doesn't get in your way.

Also have a look at https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/ (author here).

VPS is slightly lower level which gives you a lot more control: integrate with your existing Node.js backend (use any backend framework you want), deploy anywhere, use any React alternative (Solid, Preact, ...) and any data fetching tool (e.g. Relay can't really be used with Next.js).

The flip side is that you've to write a little bit more glue code. Although this will be alleviated by a lot with projects such as Bati[0], Stem[1], and vike-react (see Vike Rebranding[2]).

VPS also cares a ton about details, such as hooks for full control over i18n (use any i18n strategy you want), better Base URL support (VPS supports setting a different base for your server and your CDN), automatic deploy synchronisation, domain-driven file structure, polished and helpful error messages (especially the next upcoming release), ...

Detailed comparison with Next.js: [3].

If you run into any blocker then it's quickly fixed (or at least a workaround is proposed).

It supports not only SSR and pre-rendering, but also SPA in case you don't need SSR. It's going to support RSC but doesn't yet (RSC isn't ready for production).

Because it's lower level and because it's decoupled from React everything is designed in an agnostic way and with meticulous care. In other words: vite-plugin-ssr is becoming a robust foundation. There are breaking changes coming for the v1 release but beyond that chances are that there won't be any breaking change for years in a row.

In a nutshell: vite-plugin-ssr takes care of the frontend and only the frontend. You keep control over your architecture. (Whereas frameworks tend to put themselves right in the middle of your architecture restricting you in fundemetanl ways.)

Last but not least: it's powered by Vite which means blazing fast HMR.

[0] https://batijs.github.io

[1] https://stemjs.com/

[2] https://github.com/brillout/vite-plugin-ssr/issues/736

[3] https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/nextjs-comparison

Now by default, Vite doesn't do SSR. One way to do Vite+SSR is to use vite-plugin-ssr. You can scaffold an example project that does SSR based on some dynamic data:

vite-plugin-ssr