gRPC Development

This skill covers best practices for building gRPC-based services and APIs using Protocol Buffers, including service design, streaming patterns, interceptors, security, and observability.

Workflow for Building a gRPC Service

1. Define the service contract — Write .proto files with service definitions, RPC methods, and message types following the style and naming conventions below.
2. Generate language stubs — Run protoc with the appropriate language plugin (e.g., protoc-gen-go-grpc, grpcio-tools) to produce server and client code.
3. Implement the server — Create handler functions for each RPC method, register them with a gRPC server, and configure TLS, interceptors, and health checks.
4. Implement the client — Create a channel to the server, instantiate the generated client stub, and call RPC methods with proper deadlines and error handling.
5. Add interceptors — Wire in server and client interceptors for logging, authentication, metrics, and tracing.
6. Write tests — Unit-test handlers with mocked dependencies; integration-test with a real gRPC connection.
7. Deploy and observe — Enable distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), structured logging, and metrics dashboards before going to production.

Core Principles