gRPC: High-Performance RPC for Microservices

gRPC uses Protocol Buffers for fast, efficient communication between services. It supports both unary calls and streaming.

Key features: Strongly typed interfaces via proto files, binary serialization (smaller payloads), bidirectional streaming, code generation in multiple languages.

Proto file example: service UserService { rpc GetUser (UserRequest) returns (UserResponse); } message UserRequest { string id = 1; } message UserResponse { string name = 1; string email = 2; }

Workflow: 1) Define .proto service 2) Generate code 3) Implement server 4) Call from client

gRPC is ideal for internal microservice communication where performance matters. Use REST for external APIs and gRPC for service-to-service calls.