Web Quick Start

This guide gets you started with gRPC-Web with a simple working example.

Prerequisites

• docker
• docker-compose

This demo requires Docker Compose fileversion 3. Please refer toDocker website on how to install Docker.

Run an Echo example from your browser!

$ git clone https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web
$ cd grpc-web
$ docker-compose pull
$ docker-compose up -d node-server envoy commonjs-client

From your browser visitlocalhost:8081/echotest.html.

To shutdown, run docker-compose down.

What is happening?

In this demo, there are three key components:

• node-server: This is a standard gRPC Server, implemented in Node. Thisserver listens at port :9090 and implements the service’s business logic.

• envoy: This is the Envoy proxy. It listens at :8080 and forwards thebrowser’s gRPC-Web requests to port :9090. This is done via a config fileenvoy.yaml.

• commonjs-client: This component generates the client stub class using theprotoc-gen-grpc-web protoc plugin, compiles all the JS dependencies usingwebpack, and hosts the static content echotest.html and dist/main.jsusing a simple web server at port :8081. Once the user interacts with thewebpage, it sends a gRPC-Web request to the Envoy proxy endpoint at :8080.

What’s next

• Work through a more detailed tutorial ingRPC Basics: Web.