{"id":6228,"date":"2023-01-31T14:28:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kabisa.nl\/?p=6228"},"modified":"2023-10-24T12:24:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T10:24:11","slug":"grpc-vs-its-alternatives-rest-graphql-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kabisa.nl\/en\/tech\/grpc-vs-its-alternatives-rest-graphql-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"gRPC vs its alternatives (REST, GraphQL etc.)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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gRPC is a promising communication technique that has already gained a considerable footprint in the API area. It\u2019s been around since 2012 and there are many leading tech companies adopting gRPC, such as Google, Netflix, & IBM. It\u2019s becoming more popular, and it\u2019s good to know what it is and how to decide when to use it. Nowadays, you could see gRPC as an alternative to REST and GraphQL from a request\/response perspective and an alternative to WebSockets from a streaming perspective.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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What is GRPC<\/h2>

gRPC is a high performance, open source remote procedure call (RPC) framework. A remote procedure call (RPC) is when a program can execute a procedure on another machine as if it were a normal (local) method. gRPC can be used with different data formats, but usually and by default Protocol Buffers are used. This is a language-independent, binary file format for serializing data. It also has backward and forward compatibility support.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Advantages of protocol buffers:<\/h2>
  1. Compact in data format.<\/li>
  2. Parsing performance.<\/li>
  3. Support in many programming languages.<\/li>
  4. Optimal functionality through generated code.<\/li><\/ol>

    gRPC use cases<\/h2>

    The main reason for using gRPC is performance. For example, gRPC is 7 times faster than REST when receiving data & 10 times faster than REST when sending data for a payload(Source)<\/a>. This is mainly due to the tight packing of Protocol Buffers and the usage of HTTP\/2.<\/p>

    Besides the main advantage, gRPC could be considered in the following use cases for projects:<\/p>

    1. For mobile applications and IoT Devices since they do not need a web browser and can benefit from small, efficient messages (Protocol Buffers). This results in less data traffic and also preserving a tablet\/mobile\u2019s CPU usage (which saves on battery).<\/li>
    2. For communication between internal (micro) services, especially in multi-language systems. Since gRPC provides the possibility to define a strong API contract\u00a0(Proto file)<\/a>, this file can be used to generate code in multiple supported languages (Java, C#, Go etc.). In this way, the generated code can be used for services to call each other while being in a different language.<\/li>
    3. For inter process communication, it\u2019s becoming more and more the standard. Examples are Unix sockets and named pipes that can be used with gRPC to communicate between applications on the same machine.<\/li><\/ol>

      Alternatives to gRPC<\/h2>

      There could also be alternatives like:<\/p>

      1. REST API is generally the most simple and popular choice, since it has become quite the industry standard. It\u2019s most suited for web (client)- server communication and public API\u2019s.<\/li>
      2. GraphQL is relevant if you want a flexible API where different clients make custom requests. In this way, it\u2019s possible from the client side to get the specific data they need.<\/li>
      3. WebSockets is a better fit when the system is sending the same message to multiple users at once. Various WebSocket libraries implement broadcasting over WebSockets (usually via pub\/sub mechanism for messaging). Whereas, gRPC does not natively support broadcasting.