grpc/Step_2.md

Step-2: Write a service client.

This step uses the generated code to write a simple client to access the hello service. The full client is in GreetingsClient.java.

Configuring the service to connect to.

The client contains uses a Stub to contact the service. The internet address is configured in the client constructor. gRPC Channel is the abstraction over transport handling; its constructor accepts the host name and port of the service. The channel in turn is used to construct the Stub.

  private final ChannelImpl channel;
  private final GreetingGrpc.GreetingBlockingStub blockingStub;

  public HelloClient(String host, int port) {
    channel = NettyChannelBuilder.forAddress(host, port)
              .negotiationType(NegotiationType.PLAINTEXT)
              .build();
    blockingStub = GreetingGrpc.newBlockingStub(channel);
  }

Obtaining a greeting

The greet method uses the stub to contact the service and obtain a greeting. It:

• constructs a request
• obtains a reply from the stub
• prints out the greeting

  public void greet(String name) {
    logger.debug("Will try to greet " + name + " ...");
    try {
      Helloworld.HelloRequest request = Helloworld.HelloRequest.newBuilder().setName(name).build();
      Helloworld.HelloReply reply = blockingStub.hello(request);
      logger.info("Greeting: " + reply.getMessage());
    } catch (RuntimeException e) {
      logger.log(Level.WARNING, "RPC failed", e);
      return;
    }
  }

Running from the command line

The main method puts together the example so that it can be run from a command line.

    /* Access a service running on the local machine on port 50051 */
    HelloClient client = new HelloClient("localhost", 50051);
    String user = "world";
    if (args.length > 1) {
      user = args[1];
    }
    client.greet(user);

It can be built as follows.

$ mvn package

It can also be run, but doing so now would end up a with a failure as there is no server available yet. The next step, describes how to implement, build and run a server that supports the service description.

Notes

• the client uses a blocking stub. This means that the RPC call waits for the server to respond, and will either return a response or raise an exception.

• gRPC Java has other kinds of stubs that make non-blocking calls to the server, where the response is returned asynchronously. Usage of these stubs is a more advanced topic and will be described in later steps.