Test gRPC services with gRPCurl

The gRPC functions can only be called by gRPC clients. My team just started migrating to gRPC stack, and I found gRPCCurl is a very helpful CLI tool to test and debug.

Installation

brew install grpcurl

Usage

Start your gRPC service and check the service metadata. My service is running on port of 10030.

Use "-plaintext" if your service does not use TLS.

grpcurl -plaintext localhost:10030 describe
grpc.health.v1.Health is a service:
service Health {
  rpc Check ( .grpc.health.v1.HealthCheckRequest ) returns ( .grpc.health.v1.HealthCheckResponse );
  rpc Watch ( .grpc.health.v1.HealthCheckRequest ) returns ( stream .grpc.health.v1.HealthCheckResponse );
}
grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflection is a service:
service ServerReflection {
  rpc ServerReflectionInfo ( stream .grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflectionRequest ) returns ( stream .grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflectionResponse );
}
sample_module.sample_package.SayHi is a service:
service SayHi {
  rpc SayHello ( .sample_module.sample_package.HelloRequest ) returns ( .sample_module.sample_package.HelloReply );
}

Call sample_module.sample_package.SayHi service.

grpcurl -d '{"msg": "jimmy"}' -plaintext localhost:10030 sample_module.sample_package.SayHi/SayHello
{
  "msg": "SayHijimmy",
  "code": "1"
}