Create a gRPC Client

• 4 min •

The OpenHES application provides a public connectRPC interface that is fully compatible with gRPC for efficient and scalable communication.

To integrate OpenHES into your system or automate data readings, you can build your own gRPC client to communicate with OpenHES.

  • The following example describes client generation using the Go programming language on macOS. Tool installation is done via Homebrew.
  • For different languages or operating systems, see the Buf documentation.

Tools Used

  • grpcurl - A command line tool for interaction with gRPC servers.
  • buf - A tool for managing and generating gRPC code and protocol buffers.
  • protoc - A protocol buffer compiler.
  • protoc-gen-go / protoc-gen-go-grpc - Code generator plugins for the Go language.

Generate Clients

To generate a client, follwo these steps:

  1. Install the necessary prerequisites.

    brew install grpcurl
brew install bufbuild/buf/buf

go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@latest
go install google.golang.org/grpc/cmd/protoc-gen-go-grpc@latest

export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

brew install protobuf

  2. Download the proto files.
    Replace <host:port> with the address of the openHES server.

    grpcurl -proto-out-dir=protos <host:port> list

  3. Generate client files from the protos directory.

    cd protos

echo "version: v2
plugins:
- local: protoc-gen-go-grpc
    out: ../gen/go
    opt: paths=source_relative
- protoc_builtin: go
    out: ../gen/go
    opt:
    - paths=source_relative
    - default_api_level=API_OPAQUE
- protoc_builtin: python
    out: ../gen/python/platform_api
- remote: buf.build/grpc/python
    out: ../gen/python/platform_api" >buf.gen.yaml

buf generate
  • All client files will be generated and placed in the path ../gen/.

Example YAML File

You can generate clients for multiple programming languages using a single yaml configuration file.

The following example describes client generation using the Go and Python programming languages.

version: v2
plugins:
  - local: protoc-gen-go-grpc
    out: ../gen/go
    opt: paths=source_relative
  - protoc_builtin: go
    out: ../gen/go
    opt:
      - paths=source_relative
      - default_api_level=API_OPAQUE
  - protoc_builtin: python
    out: ../gen/python/platform_api
  - remote: buf.build/grpc/python
    out: ../gen/python/platform_api

For each client defined in the yaml file, ensure that the specified plugin or plugins can generate both data types and API methods.

For a complete description of the yaml file, see the Buf documentation.

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