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What is the difference between the gRPC framework and the net/rpc package of the Golang programming language?
Both gRPC and the net/rpc package are under the Google umbrella. gRPC is a "generic RPC framework" that uses ProtoBuffer to serialize and deserialize data, whilst the net/rpc package appears to be able to perform "roughly" the same thing with encoding/gob.
The question now is, what differentiates them from one another? Which of these options comes with more benefits and fewer drawbacks?
asked Jun 12, 2022
answered Jun 30, 2022
no answer??
answered Apr 15, 2023
Hello @lance ziemann
Both gRPC and the net/rpc
package in Golang are used to implement remote procedure call (RPC) in distributed systems, but they differ in several ways:
-
Protocol:
net/rpc
uses a custom protocol while gRPC uses Protocol Buffers (protobuf) over HTTP/2. -
Language Support: gRPC supports multiple languages, including Go, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, and others, while the
net/rpc
package is only available in Go. -
Streaming: gRPC supports both unary (single-request, single-response) and streaming RPCs (multiple requests and responses), while
net/rpc
only supports unary RPCs. -
Interceptors: gRPC has interceptors, which allow middleware functions to be executed before and after the handler function, while
net/rpc
does not have this feature. -
Code Generation: gRPC generates client and server code from .proto files, while
net/rpc
does not have this feature. -
Transport Security: gRPC has built-in support for transport security using Transport Layer Security (TLS), while
net/rpc
does not have this feature.
Overall, gRPC provides more features and flexibility than the net/rpc
package, making it a better choice for building distributed systems with modern requirements.
Hope it helps you.