RPC Action 2: Using Protobuf and Custom Plugin
Discover how to define messages in Protobuf, generate Go code, and integrate it into your RPC services
In the previous article, I implemented a simple RPC interface using the net/rpc package and tried out the Gob encoding that comes with net/rpc as well as JSON encoding to learn some basics of Golang RPC. In this post, I'll combine net/rpc with protobuf and create my own protobuf plugin to help us generate code, so let's get started.
We must have used gRPC + protobuf during our work, they are not bound, gRPC can be encoded using JSON, and protobuf can be implemented in other languages. It can also be implemented in other languages.
Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs that communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an interface description language that describes the structure of some data and a program that generates source code from that description for generating or parsing a stream of bytes that represents the structured data.
Using Protobuf
First, we write a proto file hello-service.proto that defines a message "String"
syntax = "proto3";
package api;
option go_package="api";
message String {
string value = 1;
}Then use the protoc utility to generate the Go code for the message String
protoc --go_out=. hello-service.protoThen we modify the Hello function’s arguments to use the String generated by the protobuf file.
type HelloServiceInterface = interface {
Hello(request api.String, reply *api.String) error
}Using it is similar to before, even though it is not as convenient as using string directly. So why should we use protobuf? As I said earlier, using Protobuf to define language-independent RPC service interfaces and messages and then using the protoc tool to generate code in different languages is where its real value lies. For example, use the official plugin protoc-gen-go to generate gRPC code.
protoc --go_out=plugins=grpc. hello-service.protoPlugin system for protoc
To generate code from protobuf files, we must install the protoc , but the protoc We don't know our target language, so we need plugins to help us generate code. How does theprotoc plugin system work? Take the above grpc as an example. There is a --go_out parameter here. Since the plugin we're calling is protoc-gen-go, the parameter is called go_out; if the name were XXX, the parameter would be called XXX_out.
When protoc is running, it will first parse the protobuf file and generate a set of Protocol Buffers-encoded descriptive data. It will first determine whether or not the go plugin is included in the protoc, and then it will try to look for protoc-gen-go in $PATH, and if it can't find it, it will report an error, and then it will run protoc-gen-go. protoc-gen-go command and sends the description data to the plugin command via stdin.
After the plugin generates the file contents, it then inputs Protocol Buffers encoded data to stdout to tell protoc to generate the specific file. plugins=grpc is a plugin that comes with protoc-gen-go in order to invoke it. If you don't use it, it will only generate a message in Go, but you can use this plugin to generate grpc-related code.
Customize a protoc plugin
If we add Hello interface timing to protobuf, can we customize a protoc plugin to generate code directly?
syntax = "proto3";
package api;
option go_package="./api";
service HelloService {
rpc Hello (String) returns (String) {}
}
message String {
string value = 1;
}Objective
For this article, my goal was to create a plugin that would then be used to generate RPC server-side and client-side code that would look something like this.
// HelloService_rpc.pb.go
type HelloServiceInterface interface {
Hello(String, *String) error
}
func RegisterHelloService(
srv *rpc.Server, x HelloServiceInterface,
) error {
if err := srv.RegisterName("HelloService", x); err != nil {
return err
}
return nil
}
type HelloServiceClient struct {
*rpc.Client
}
var _ HelloServiceInterface = (*HelloServiceClient)(nil)
func DialHelloService(network, address string) (
*HelloServiceClient, error,
) {
c, err := rpc.Dial(network, address)
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
return &HelloServiceClient{Client: c}, nil
}
func (p *HelloServiceClient) Hello(
in String, out *String,
) error {
return p.Client.Call("HelloService.Hello", in, out)
}This would change our business code to look like the following
// service
func main() {
listener, err := net.Listen("tcp", ":1234")
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("ListenTCP error:", err)
}
_ = api.RegisterHelloService(rpc.DefaultServer, new(HelloService))
for {
conn, err := listener.Accept()
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("Accept error:", err)
}
go rpc.ServeConn(conn)
}
}
type HelloService struct{}
func (p *HelloService) Hello(request api.String, reply *api.String) error {
log.Println("HelloService.proto Hello")
*reply = api.String{Value: "Hello:" + request.Value}
return nil
}
// client.go
func main() {
client, err := api.DialHelloService("tcp", "localhost:1234")
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("net.Dial:", err)
}
reply := &api.String{}
err = client.Hello(api.String{Value: "Hello"}, reply)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
log.Println(reply)
}Based on the generated code, our workload is already much smaller, and the chances of error are very small. A good start. Based on the api code above, we can pull out a template file:
const tmplService = `
package {{.PackageName}}
import (
"net/rpc")
{{$root := .}}
type {{.ServiceName}}Interface interface {
{{- range $_, $m := .MethodList}} {{$m.MethodName}}({{$m.InputTypeName}}, *{{$m.OutputTypeName}}) error {{- end}}}
func Register{{.ServiceName}}(
srv *rpc.Server, x {{.ServiceName}}Interface,) error {
if err := srv.RegisterName("{{.ServiceName}}", x); err != nil { return err } return nil}
type {{.ServiceName}}Client struct {
*rpc.Client}
var _ {{.ServiceName}}Interface = (*{{.ServiceName}}Client)(nil)
func Dial{{.ServiceName}}(network, address string) (
*{{.ServiceName}}Client, error,) {
c, err := rpc.Dial(network, address) if err != nil { return nil, err } return &{{.ServiceName}}Client{Client: c}, nil}
{{range $_, $m := .MethodList}}
func (p *{{$root.ServiceName}}Client) {{$m.MethodName}}(
in {{$m.InputTypeName}}, out *{{$m.OutputTypeName}},) error {
return p.Client.Call("{{$root.ServiceName}}.{{$m.MethodName}}", in, out)}
{{end}}
`The whole template is clear, and there are some placeholders in it, such as MethodName, ServiceName, etc., which we’ll cover later.
How to develop a plug-in?
Google released the Go language API 1, which introduces a new package google.golang.org/protobuf/compile R/protogen, which greatly reduces the difficulty of plugins development:
- First of all, we create a go language project, such as
protoc-gen-go-spprpc - Then we need to define a
protogen.Options, then call itsRunmethod, and pass in afunc(*protogen.Plugin) errorcallback. This is the end of the main process code. - We can also set the ParamFunc parameter of
protogen.Options, so thatprotogenwill automatically parse the parameters passed by the command line for us. Operations such as reading and decodingprotobufinformation from standard input, encoding input information intoprotobufand writing stdout are all handled byprotogen. What we need to do is to interact withprotogen.Pluginto implement code generation logic.
The most important thing for each service is the name of the service, and then each service has a set of methods. For the method defined by the service, the most important thing is the name of the method and the name of the input parameter and the output parameter type. Let’s first define a ServiceData to describe the meta information of the service:
// ServiceData
type ServiceData struct {
PackageName string
ServiceName string
MethodList []Method
}
// Method
type Method struct {
MethodName string
InputTypeName string
OutputTypeName string
}Then comes the main logic, and the code generation logic, and finally the call to tmpl to generate the code.
func main() {
protogen.Options{}.Run(func(gen *protogen.Plugin) error {
for _, file := range gen.Files {
if !file.Generate {
continue
}
generateFile(gen, file)
}
return nil
})
}
// generateFile function definition
func generateFile(gen *protogen.Plugin, file *protogen.File) {
filename := file.GeneratedFilenamePrefix + "_rpc.pb.go"
g := gen.NewGeneratedFile(filename, file.GoImportPath)
tmpl, err := template.New("service").Parse(tmplService)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("Error parsing template: %v", err)
}
packageName := string(file.GoPackageName)
// Iterate over each service to generate code
for _, service := range file.Services {
serviceData := ServiceData{
ServiceName: service.GoName,
PackageName: packageName,
}
for _, method := range service.Methods {
inputType := method.Input.GoIdent.GoName
outputType := method.Output.GoIdent.GoName
serviceData.MethodList = append(serviceData.MethodList, Method{
MethodName: method.GoName,
InputTypeName: inputType,
OutputTypeName: outputType,
})
}
// Perform template rendering
err = tmpl.Execute(g, serviceData)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("Error executing template: %v", err)
}
}
}Debug plugin
Finally, we put the compiled binary execution file protoc-gen-go-spprpc in $PATH, and then run protoc to generate the code we want.
protoc --go_out=.. --go-spprpc_out=.. HelloService.protoBecause protoc-gen-go-spprpc has to depend on protoc to run, it's a bit tricky to debug. We can use
fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "Fprintln: %v\n", err)to print the error log to debug.
Summary
That’s all there is to this article. We first implemented an RPC call using protobuf, and then created a protobuf plugin to help us generate the code. This opens the door for us to learn protobuf + RPC, and is our path to a thorough understanding of gRPC. I hope everyone can master this technology.
