#gRPC Basics: C++
This tutorial provides a basic C++ programmer's introduction to working with
gRPC. By walking through this example you'll learn how to:
- Define a service in a `.proto` file.
- Generate server and client code using the protocol buffer compiler.
- Use the C++ gRPC API to write a simple client and server for your service.
It assumes that you are familiar with
[protocol buffers](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview).
Note that the example in this tutorial uses the proto3 version of the protocol
buffers language, which is currently in alpha release: you can find out more in
the [proto3 language guide](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/proto3)
and see the [release notes](https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases) for the
new version in the protocol buffers Github repository.
## Why use gRPC?
Our example is a simple route mapping application that lets clients get
information about features on their route, create a summary of their route, and
exchange route information such as traffic updates with the server and other
clients.
With gRPC we can define our service once in a `.proto` file and implement clients
and servers in any of gRPC's supported languages, which in turn can be run in
environments ranging from servers inside Google to your own tablet - all the
complexity of communication between different languages and environments is
handled for you by gRPC. We also get all the advantages of working with protocol
buffers, including efficient serialization, a simple IDL, and easy interface
updating.
## Example code and setup
The example code for our tutorial is in [examples/cpp/route_guide](route_guide).
You also should have the relevant tools installed to generate the server and
client interface code - if you don't already, follow the setup instructions in
[INSTALL.md](../../INSTALL.md).
## Defining the service
Our first step is to define the gRPC *service* and the method *request* and
*response* types using
[protocol buffers](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview).
You can see the complete `.proto` file in
[`examples/protos/route_guide.proto`](../protos/route_guide.proto).
To define a service, you specify a named `service` in your `.proto` file:
```protobuf
service RouteGuide {
...
}
```
Then you define `rpc` methods inside your service definition, specifying their
request and response types. gRPC lets you define four kinds of service method,
all of which are used in the `RouteGuide` service:
- A *simple RPC* where the client sends a request to the server using the stub
and waits for a response to come back, just like a normal function call.
```protobuf
// Obtains the feature at a given position.
rpc GetFeature(Point) returns (Feature) {}
```
- A *server-side streaming RPC* where the client sends a request to the server
and gets a stream to read a sequence of messages back. The client reads from
the returned stream until there are no more messages. As you can see in our
example, you specify a server-side streaming method by placing the `stream`
keyword before the *response* type.
```protobuf
// Obtains the Features available within the given Rectangle. Results are
// streamed rather than returned at once (e.g. in a response message with a
// repeated field), as the rectangle may cover a large area and contain a
// huge number of features.
rpc ListFeatures(Rectangle) returns (stream Feature) {}
```
- A *client-side streaming RPC* where the client writes a sequence of messages
and sends them to the server, again using a provided stream. Once the client
has finished writing the messages, it waits for the server to read them all
and return its response. You specify a client-side streaming method by placing
the `stream` keyword before the *request* type.
```protobuf
// Accepts a stream of Points on a route being traversed, returning a
// RouteSummary when traversal is completed.
rpc RecordRoute(stream Point) returns (RouteSummary) {}
```
- A *bidirectional streaming RPC* where both sides send a sequence of messages
using a read-write stream. The two streams operate independently, so clients
and servers can read and write in whatever order they like: for example, the
server could wait to receive all the client messages before writing its
responses, or it could alternately read a message then write a message, or
some other combination of reads and writes. The order of messages in each
stream is preserved. You specify this type of method by placing the `stream`
keyword before both the request and the response.
```protobuf
// Accepts a stream of RouteNotes sent while a route is being traversed,
// while receiving other RouteNotes (e.g. from other users).
rpc RouteChat(stream RouteNote) returns (stream RouteNote) {}
```
Our `.proto` file also contains protocol buffer message type definitions for all
the request and response types used in our service methods - for example, here's
the `Point` message type:
```protobuf
// Points are represented as latitude-longitude pairs in the E7 representation
// (degrees multiplied by 10**7 and rounded to the nearest integer).
// Latitudes should be in the range +/- 90 degrees and longitude should be in
// the range +/- 180 degrees (inclusive).
message Point {
int32 latitude = 1;
int32 longitude = 2;
}
```
## Generating client and server code
Next we need to generate the gRPC client and server interfaces from our `.proto`
service definition. We do this using the protocol buffer compiler `protoc` with
a special gRPC C++ plugin.
For simplicity, we've provided a [Makefile](route_guide/Makefile) that runs
`protoc` for you with the appropriate plugin, input, and output (if you want to
run this yourself, make sure you've installed protoc and followed the gRPC code
[installation instructions](../../INSTALL.md) first):
```shell
$ make route_guide.grpc.pb.cc route_guide.pb.cc
```
which actually runs:
```shell
$ protoc -I ../../protos --grpc_out=. --plugin=protoc-gen-grpc=`which grpc_cpp_plugin` ../../protos/route_guide.proto
$ protoc -I ../../protos --cpp_out=. ../../protos/route_guide.proto
```
Running this command generates the following files in your current directory:
- `route_guide.pb.h`, the header which declares your generated message classes
- `route_guide.pb.cc`, which contains the implementation of your message classes
- `route_guide.grpc.pb.h`, the header which declares your generated service
classes
- `route_guide.grpc.pb.cc`, which contains the implementation of your service
classes
These contain:
- All the protocol buffer code to populate, serialize, and retrieve our request
and response message types
- A class called `RouteGuide` that contains
- a remote interface type (or *stub*) for clients to call with the methods
defined in the `RouteGuide` service.
- two abstract interfaces for servers to implement, also with the methods
defined in the `RouteGuide` service.
## Creating the server
First let's look at how we create a `RouteGuide` server. If you're only
interested in creating gRPC clients, you can skip this section and go straight
to [Creating the client](#client) (though you might find it interesting
anyway!).
There are two parts to making our `RouteGuide` service do its job:
- Implementing the service interface generated from our service definition:
doing the actual "work" of our service.
- Running a gRPC server to listen for requests from clients and return the
service responses.
You can find our example `RouteGuide` server in
[route_guide/route_guide_server.cc](route_guide/route_guide_server.cc). Let's
take a closer look at how it works.
### Implementing RouteGuide
As you can see, our server has a `RouteGuideImpl` class that implements the
generated `RouteGuide::Service` interface:
```cpp
class RouteGuideImpl final : public RouteGuide::Service {
...
}
```
In this case we're implementing the *synchronous* version of `RouteGuide`, which
provides our default gRPC server behaviour. It's also possible to implement an
asynchronous interface, `RouteGuide::AsyncService`, which allows you to further
customize your server's threading behaviour, though we won't look at this in
this tutorial.
`RouteGuideImpl` implements all our service methods. Let's look at the simplest
type first, `GetFeature`, which just gets a `Point` from the client and returns
the corresponding feature information from its database in a `Feature`.
```cpp
Status GetFeature(ServerContext* context, const Point* point,
Feature* feature) override {
feature->set_name(GetFeatureName(*point, feature_list_));
feature->mutable_location()->CopyFrom(*point);
return Status::OK;
}
```
The method is passed a context object for the RPC, the client's `Point` protocol
buffer request, and a `Feature` protocol buffer to fill in with the response
information. In the method we populate the `Feature` with the appropriate
information, and then `return` with an `OK` status to tell gRPC that we've
finished dealing with the RPC and that the `Feature` can be returned to the
client.
Now let's look at something a bit more complicated - a streaming RPC.
`ListFeatures` is a server-side streaming RPC, so we need to send back multiple
`Feature`s to our client.
```cpp
Status ListFeatures(ServerContext* context, const Rectangle* rectangle,
ServerWriter* writer) override {
auto lo = rectangle->lo();
auto hi = rectangle->hi();
long left = std::min(lo.longitude(), hi.longitude());
long right = std::max(lo.longitude(), hi.longitude());
long top = std::max(lo.latitude(), hi.latitude());
long bottom = std::min(lo.latitude(), hi.latitude());
for (const Feature& f : feature_list_) {
if (f.location().longitude() >= left &&
f.location().longitude() <= right &&
f.location().latitude() >= bottom &&
f.location().latitude() <= top) {
writer->Write(f);
}
}
return Status::OK;
}
```
As you can see, instead of getting simple request and response objects in our
method parameters, this time we get a request object (the `Rectangle` in which
our client wants to find `Feature`s) and a special `ServerWriter` object. In the
method, we populate as many `Feature` objects as we need to return, writing them
to the `ServerWriter` using its `Write()` method. Finally, as in our simple RPC,
we `return Status::OK` to tell gRPC that we've finished writing responses.
If you look at the client-side streaming method `RecordRoute` you'll see it's
quite similar, except this time we get a `ServerReader` instead of a request
object and a single response. We use the `ServerReader`s `Read()` method to
repeatedly read in our client's requests to a request object (in this case a
`Point`) until there are no more messages: the server needs to check the return
value of `Read()` after each call. If `true`, the stream is still good and it
can continue reading; if `false` the message stream has ended.
```cpp
while (stream->Read(&point)) {
...//process client input
}
```
Finally, let's look at our bidirectional streaming RPC `RouteChat()`.
```cpp
Status RouteChat(ServerContext* context,
ServerReaderWriter* stream) override {
std::vector received_notes;
RouteNote note;
while (stream->Read(¬e)) {
for (const RouteNote& n : received_notes) {
if (n.location().latitude() == note.location().latitude() &&
n.location().longitude() == note.location().longitude()) {
stream->Write(n);
}
}
received_notes.push_back(note);
}
return Status::OK;
}
```
This time we get a `ServerReaderWriter` that can be used to read *and* write
messages. The syntax for reading and writing here is exactly the same as for our
client-streaming and server-streaming methods. Although each side will always
get the other's messages in the order they were written, both the client and
server can read and write in any order — the streams operate completely
independently.
### Starting the server
Once we've implemented all our methods, we also need to start up a gRPC server
so that clients can actually use our service. The following snippet shows how we
do this for our `RouteGuide` service:
```cpp
void RunServer(const std::string& db_path) {
std::string server_address("0.0.0.0:50051");
RouteGuideImpl service(db_path);
ServerBuilder builder;
builder.AddListeningPort(server_address, grpc::InsecureServerCredentials());
builder.RegisterService(&service);
std::unique_ptr server(builder.BuildAndStart());
std::cout << "Server listening on " << server_address << std::endl;
server->Wait();
}
```
As you can see, we build and start our server using a `ServerBuilder`. To do this, we:
1. Create an instance of our service implementation class `RouteGuideImpl`.
1. Create an instance of the factory `ServerBuilder` class.
1. Specify the address and port we want to use to listen for client requests
using the builder's `AddListeningPort()` method.
1. Register our service implementation with the builder.
1. Call `BuildAndStart()` on the builder to create and start an RPC server for
our service.
1. Call `Wait()` on the server to do a blocking wait until process is killed or
`Shutdown()` is called.
## Creating the client
In this section, we'll look at creating a C++ client for our `RouteGuide`
service. You can see our complete example client code in
[route_guide/route_guide_client.cc](route_guide/route_guide_client.cc).
### Creating a stub
To call service methods, we first need to create a *stub*.
First we need to create a gRPC *channel* for our stub, specifying the server
address and port we want to connect to without SSL:
```cpp
grpc::CreateChannel("localhost:50051", grpc::InsecureChannelCredentials());
```
Now we can use the channel to create our stub using the `NewStub` method
provided in the `RouteGuide` class we generated from our `.proto`.
```cpp
public:
RouteGuideClient(std::shared_ptr channel, const std::string& db)
: stub_(RouteGuide::NewStub(channel)) {
...
}
```
### Calling service methods
Now let's look at how we call our service methods. Note that in this tutorial
we're calling the *blocking/synchronous* versions of each method: this means
that the RPC call waits for the server to respond, and will either return a
response or raise an exception.
#### Simple RPC
Calling the simple RPC `GetFeature` is nearly as straightforward as calling a
local method.
```cpp
Point point;
Feature feature;
point = MakePoint(409146138, -746188906);
GetOneFeature(point, &feature);
...
bool GetOneFeature(const Point& point, Feature* feature) {
ClientContext context;
Status status = stub_->GetFeature(&context, point, feature);
...
}
```
As you can see, we create and populate a request protocol buffer object (in our
case `Point`), and create a response protocol buffer object for the server to
fill in. We also create a `ClientContext` object for our call - you can
optionally set RPC configuration values on this object, such as deadlines,
though for now we'll use the default settings. Note that you cannot reuse this
object between calls. Finally, we call the method on the stub, passing it the
context, request, and response. If the method returns `OK`, then we can read the
response information from the server from our response object.
```cpp
std::cout << "Found feature called " << feature->name() << " at "
<< feature->location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
<< feature->location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
```
#### Streaming RPCs
Now let's look at our streaming methods. If you've already read [Creating the
server](#server) some of this may look very familiar - streaming RPCs are
implemented in a similar way on both sides. Here's where we call the server-side
streaming method `ListFeatures`, which returns a stream of geographical
`Feature`s:
```cpp
std::unique_ptr > reader(
stub_->ListFeatures(&context, rect));
while (reader->Read(&feature)) {
std::cout << "Found feature called "
<< feature.name() << " at "
<< feature.location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
<< feature.location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
}
Status status = reader->Finish();
```
Instead of passing the method a context, request, and response, we pass it a
context and request and get a `ClientReader` object back. The client can use the
`ClientReader` to read the server's responses. We use the `ClientReader`s
`Read()` method to repeatedly read in the server's responses to a response
protocol buffer object (in this case a `Feature`) until there are no more
messages: the client needs to check the return value of `Read()` after each
call. If `true`, the stream is still good and it can continue reading; if
`false` the message stream has ended. Finally, we call `Finish()` on the stream
to complete the call and get our RPC status.
The client-side streaming method `RecordRoute` is similar, except there we pass
the method a context and response object and get back a `ClientWriter`.
```cpp
std::unique_ptr > writer(
stub_->RecordRoute(&context, &stats));
for (int i = 0; i < kPoints; i++) {
const Feature& f = feature_list_[feature_distribution(generator)];
std::cout << "Visiting point "
<< f.location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
<< f.location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
if (!writer->Write(f.location())) {
// Broken stream.
break;
}
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(
delay_distribution(generator)));
}
writer->WritesDone();
Status status = writer->Finish();
if (status.IsOk()) {
std::cout << "Finished trip with " << stats.point_count() << " points\n"
<< "Passed " << stats.feature_count() << " features\n"
<< "Travelled " << stats.distance() << " meters\n"
<< "It took " << stats.elapsed_time() << " seconds"
<< std::endl;
} else {
std::cout << "RecordRoute rpc failed." << std::endl;
}
```
Once we've finished writing our client's requests to the stream using `Write()`,
we need to call `WritesDone()` on the stream to let gRPC know that we've
finished writing, then `Finish()` to complete the call and get our RPC status.
If the status is `OK`, our response object that we initially passed to
`RecordRoute()` will be populated with the server's response.
Finally, let's look at our bidirectional streaming RPC `RouteChat()`. In this
case, we just pass a context to the method and get back a `ClientReaderWriter`,
which we can use to both write and read messages.
```cpp
std::shared_ptr > stream(
stub_->RouteChat(&context));
```
The syntax for reading and writing here is exactly the same as for our
client-streaming and server-streaming methods. Although each side will always
get the other's messages in the order they were written, both the client and
server can read and write in any order — the streams operate completely
independently.
## Try it out!
Build client and server:
```shell
$ make
```
Run the server, which will listen on port 50051:
```shell
$ ./route_guide_server
```
Run the client (in a different terminal):
```shell
$ ./route_guide_client
```