grpc-web

Description

gRPC is a high-performance RPC framework based on HTTP/2 and Protocol Buffers, but it is not natively supported by browsers. gRPC-Web defines a browser-compatible protocol for sending gRPC requests over HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2.

The grpc-web Plugin translates gRPC-Web requests into native gRPC calls and forwards them to upstream gRPC services.

Attributes

Request Handling

The grpc-web Plugin processes client requests with specific HTTP methods, content types, and CORS rules.

Supported HTTP Methods

The Plugin supports:

• POST for gRPC-Web requests
• OPTIONS for CORS preflight checks

See CORS support for details.

Supported Content Types

The Plugin recognizes the following content types:

• application/grpc-web
• application/grpc-web-text
• application/grpc-web+proto
• application/grpc-web-text+proto

It automatically decodes messages in binary or base64 text format and translates them into standard gRPC for the upstream server. See Protocol differences vs gRPC over HTTP2 for more details.

CORS Handling

The Plugin automatically handles cross-origin requests. By default:

• All origins (*) are allowed
• POST requests are permitted
• Accepted request headers: content-type, x-grpc-web, x-user-agent
• Exposed response headers: grpc-status, grpc-message

Examples

The following examples demonstrate how to configure and use the grpc-web Plugin with a gRPC-Web client.

:::note

You can fetch the admin_key from config.yaml and save to an environment variable with the following command:

admin_key=$(yq '.deployment.admin.admin_key[0].key' conf/config.yaml | sed 's/"//g')

:::

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the examples, complete the following steps to set up an upstream server and gRPC-Web client.

Start an Upstream Server

Start a grpcbin server to serve as the example upstream:

docker run -d \
  --name grpcbin \
  -p 9000:9000 \
  moul/grpcbin

Generate gRPC-Web Client Code

Download the Protocol Buffer definition hello.proto:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moul/pb/master/hello/hello.proto

Install protobuf and protoc-gen-grpc-web.

Generate the gRPC-Web client code from hello.proto:

protoc \
  --js_out=import_style=commonjs:. \
  --grpc-web_out=import_style=commonjs,mode=grpcwebtext:. \
  hello.proto

You should see two files generated in the current directory: hello_pb.js for Protocol Buffers message classes and hello_grpc_web_pb.js for gRPC-Web client stubs.

Create a Client

Create a Node.js project and install the required dependencies:

npm init -y
npm install xhr2 grpc-web google-protobuf

Create a client file:

const XMLHttpRequest = require('xhr2');
const { HelloServiceClient } = require('./hello_grpc_web_pb');
const { HelloRequest } = require('./hello_pb');

global.XMLHttpRequest = XMLHttpRequest;

function sayHello(){
  const client = new HelloServiceClient('http://127.0.0.1:9080/grpc/web', null, {
    format: 'text',
  });
  const req = new HelloRequest();
  req.setGreeting('jack');

  const call = client.sayHello(req, {}, (err, resp) => {
    if (err) {
      console.error('grpc error:', err.code, err.message);
    } else {
      console.log('reply:', resp.getReply());
    }
  });

  call.on('metadata', (metadata) => {
    console.log('Response headers:', metadata);
  });
}

function lotsOfReplies() {
  const client = new HelloServiceClient('http://127.0.0.1:9080/grpc/web', null, {
    format: 'text',
  });
  const req = new HelloRequest();
  req.setGreeting('rep');
  const stream = client.lotsOfReplies(req, {});

  stream.on('metadata', (metadata) => {
    console.log('Response headers:', metadata);
  });

  stream.on('data', (response) => {
    console.log('Reply:', response.getReply());
  });

  stream.on('end', () => {
    console.log('Stream ended');
  });

  stream.on('error', (err) => {
    console.error('Error:', err);
  });
}

lotsOfReplies()
sayHello()

You can run the client with node client.js to send both unary and server-streaming requests to your gRPC server via the gateway.

Proxy gRPC-Web (Prefix Match Route)

The following example demonstrates how to configure and use the grpc-web Plugin with the gRPC-Web client set up previously.

Create a Route with the grpc-web Plugin:

curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/grpc-web-route" -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
  "uri": "/grpc/web/*",
  "plugins": {
    "grpc-web": {}
  },
  "upstream": {
    "scheme": "grpc",
    "type": "roundrobin",
    "nodes": {
      "127.0.0.1:9000": 1
    }
  }
}'

:::note

In APISIX versions prior to 3.15.0, the Route URI must use a prefix match because gRPC-Web clients include the package name, service name, and method name in the request URI. Using an absolute URI match in these versions will prevent the request from matching the Route.

In this example, the Route URI must be configured as /grpc/web/* to correctly match client requests such as /grpc/web/hello.HelloService/SayHello. Using a broader prefix like /grpc/* would prevent the gateway from correctly extracting the full service path, resulting in errors such as unknown service web/hello.HelloService.

:::

Run the client to send requests to the gateway Route:

node client.js

You should see a reply from the upstream gRPC server:

Response headers: {
  ...
  'access-control-allow-origin': '*',
  'access-control-expose-headers': 'grpc-message,grpc-status'
}
Response headers: {
  ...
  'access-control-allow-origin': '*',
  'access-control-expose-headers': 'grpc-message,grpc-status'
}
reply: hello jack