| = Akka gRPC |
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| include::partial$include.adoc[] |
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| https://grpc.io[gRPC {tab-icon}, window="tab"] is a transport mechanism for request/response and streaming use cases. It can run in almost any environment with bindings to many programming languages. It takes a schema-first approach, where your protocol is declared in a https://doc.akka.io/docs/akka-grpc/current/proto.html[Protobuf service descriptor {tab-icon}, window="tab"]. From the service descriptor the source code for the messages, client and server stubs are generated. |
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| It has several advantages: |
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| * Schema-first design favors well-defined and decoupled service interfaces over brittle ad-hoc solutions. |
| * The Protobuf-based wire protocol is efficient, well-known, and allows compatible schema evolution. |
| * It is based on HTTP/2 which allows multiplexing several data streams over a single connection. |
| * Streaming requests and responses are first class. |
| * There are tools available for many languages allowing seamless interoperability between clients and services written in different languages. |
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| That makes it well-suited for: |
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| * Connections between internal services |
| * Connecting to external services that expose a gRPC API (even ones written in other languages) |
| * Serving data to web or mobile front-ends |
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| {akka-grpc}/[Akka gRPC {tab-icon}, window="tab"] is a gRPC library for the Akka ecosystem. It has support for Maven, gradle and sbt. The gRPC servers and clients use xref:akka-stream.adoc[], Scala `Future` and Java `CompletionStage` in the user facing API. |
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| == Learn more |
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| * The {akka-blog}/news/2020/04/08/akka-grpc-intro-video[Introduction to Akka gRPC video {tab-icon}, window="tab"] is a good starting point for learning Akka gRPC. |
| * {akka-grpc}/whygrpc.html[Akka gRPC "Why gRPC?" {tab-icon}, window="tab"] |
| * {akka-grpc}/server/walkthrough.html[Akka gRPC server walk-through {tab-icon}, window="tab"] |
| * {akka-grpc}/client/walkthrough.html[Akka gRPC client walk-through {tab-icon}, window="tab"] |
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