Ask HN: Why isn't JSON-RPC more widely adopted?

• json-api

  60 7,327 5.2 CSS

  A specification for building JSON APIs

  

• sick

  3 9 7.1 C#

  Streams of Independent Constant Keys

  

JSON-like data structures do not necessary require a stack automaton for parsing. Moreover it doesn't necessarily require any parsing at all.

E.g. I've implemented a simple indexed binary format for JSON-like data: https://github.com/7mind/sick

The problems with JSON-RPC are mostly in its design, it's not ergonomic and its type system is a joke.

There are many better alternatives ranging from gRPC (still not ergonomic and not modular) to Protoforce (extremely powerful and ergonomic but only marginally adopted).

• SurveyJS

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  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• GJSON

  34 13,661 5.1 Go

  Get JSON values quickly - JSON parser for Go

one way could be you peek method using sth like https://github.com/tidwall/gjson

• grpc-web

  33 8,323 6.4 JavaScript

  gRPC for Web Clients

  

Personally, find gRPC-Web very attractive but the current state of TypeScript/JS code-gen is very confusing and lacking.

I would love something like https://orval.dev for gRPC-web. Have I missed something or is it just early to expect it?

I tried a few libraries but couldn't get them to work or would generate unappealing results. I believe I'm hitting this issue with my local experiments. https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web/issues/535

• orval

  20 2,297 9.6 TypeScript

  orval is able to generate client with appropriate type-signatures (TypeScript) from any valid OpenAPI v3 or Swagger v2 specification, either in yaml or json formats. 🍺

Personally, find gRPC-Web very attractive but the current state of TypeScript/JS code-gen is very confusing and lacking.

I would love something like https://orval.dev for gRPC-web. Have I missed something or is it just early to expect it?

I tried a few libraries but couldn't get them to work or would generate unappealing results. I believe I'm hitting this issue with my local experiments. https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web/issues/535

• network

  3 20 4.6 Go

  Micro Communication Protocol (MUCP) (by micro)

  

So funny you say this. I think it's the insight of many developers including my own. I hacked together a framework that did this before the existence of GRPC. Now I'm trying to formalise it as a protocol. https://github.com/micro/network/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md

• jsonrpc

  1 1 4.1 TypeScript

  Jsonrpc module. (by preludejs)

  

We use jsonrpc over websockets in production for many years in trading services. It works very well. We use lightweight libraries that look like this [0] and this [1]. It's lightweight, fast, type safe, easy to maintain and debug etc.

[0] https://github.com/preludejs/jsonrpc

[1] https://github.com/preludejs/refute

• InfluxDB

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• refute

  3 9 5.9 TypeScript

  Refute module.

  

We use jsonrpc over websockets in production for many years in trading services. It works very well. We use lightweight libraries that look like this [0] and this [1]. It's lightweight, fast, type safe, easy to maintain and debug etc.

[0] https://github.com/preludejs/jsonrpc

[1] https://github.com/preludejs/refute

• NATS

  106 14,816 9.8 Go

  High-Performance server for NATS.io, the cloud and edge native messaging system.

  

I use JSON-RPC as a standard to command devices that connect to a message bus (I use NATS: https://nats.io/). I wouldn't use it as an alternative to REST or GraphQL, they have different goals/use cases.

• protobuf-es

  7 940 9.2 TypeScript

  Protocol Buffers for ECMAScript. The only JavaScript Protobuf library that is fully-compliant with Protobuf conformance tests.

  

Ah you should check out https://github.com/bufbuild/protobuf-es which feels great so far. Then there's connect by the same buf people but it has a grpc-web option https://connect.build/docs/web/getting-started/. The amount of code generated is also tiny, which I love.

• connect-es

  13 1,211 9.2 TypeScript

  The TypeScript implementation of Connect: Protobuf RPC that works.

  

As for better gRPC-web, you might want to look into connect-web https://github.com/bufbuild/connect-web

Suggest a related project