iris-grpc-example

A hello world example adapted from the officials examples, presenting how to use gRPC with IRIS.

You can find more information on [this article] (https://community.intersystems.com/post/grpc-what-it-and-hello-world).

Installation prerequisites

If you’d like to test the project in your environment, make sure you have git and Docker desktop installed.

Docker installation

If the online demo is not available anymore or you would like to play with the project code, you can set up a docker container. In order to get your container running, follow these steps:

Clone/git pull the repo into any local directory

$ git clone git@github.com:jrpereirajr/iris-grpc-example.git

Open the terminal in this directory and run:

$ docker-compose build

3. Run the IRIS container with your project:

$ docker-compose up -d

Playing with the code

Open a cache terminal through the system terminal or through Visual Studio Code:

docker exec -it iris-grpc-example_iris_1 bash
iris session iris

Start our gRPC server:

Set server = ##class(dc.jrpereira.gRPC.HelloWorldServer).%New()
Do server.Start()

Now, let’s create a gRPC client to interact with this server:

Set client = ##class(dc.jrpereira.gRPC.HelloWorldClient).%New()
Do client.ExecutePython()

If all is OK, you should see a bunch of greeting messages in the terminal.

Finally, let’s stop out server:

Do server.Stop()

Using the grpcurl utility within our hello world

The grpcurl utility is an equivalent to curl one, but here instead of act like a http client (like curl), we use grpcurl as a gRPC client to test services from a running gRPC server. So let’s use it to play a little bit more with our hello world.

First, let’s download and install the grpcurl utility:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl/releases/download/v1.8.6/grpcurl_1.8.6_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
tar -zxvf grpcurl_1.8.6_linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Check if the installation is OK, by typing:

./grpcurl --help

If all is OK, you should receive an output with all grpcurl options.

Start the gRPC server in a IRIS terminal session as described above:

Set server = ##class(dc.jrpereira.gRPC.HelloWorldServer).%New()
Do server.Start()

Now, let’s ask what services are available in the server:

./grpcurl \
	-plaintext \
	-import-path /irisrun/repo/jrpereira/python/grpc-test \
	-proto helloworld.proto \
	localhost:50051 \
	list

You should receive this response:

helloworld.MultiGreeter

As you can see, the utility returned our service defined in the proto file (helloworld.MultiGreeter) as a response for listing all services available.

In the command above, I put each parameter in one separated line. So, let’s explain each one:

-plaintext: allows using gRPC with noTLS (insecure); we’re using here because we didn’t implement a secure connection for our serve - of course should be used only in non-production environment
-import-path and -proto: path and name for the .proto file (service definition); necessary if you the server doesn’t implement reflection

After these parameters, we provide the server hostname and port, and then a grpcurl command, list in this case.

Now, let’s ask for all methods in the service helloworld.MultiGreeter:

./grpcurl \
	-plaintext \
	-import-path /irisrun/repo/jrpereira/python/grpc-test \
	-proto helloworld.proto \
	localhost:50051 \
	list helloworld.MultiGreeter

You should receive this output:

helloworld.MultiGreeter.SayHello
helloworld.MultiGreeter.SayHelloStream

As you can see, these are the methods defined into the proto file used to generate code for our server.

Ok, now let’s test the SayHello() method:

./grpcurl \
	-plaintext  \
	-d '{"name":"you"}' \
	-import-path /irisrun/repo/jrpereira/python/grpc-test \
	-proto helloworld.proto \
	localhost:50051 \
	helloworld.MultiGreeter.SayHello

Here is the expected output (just like our client implemented early):

{
  "message": "Hi you! :)"
}

Also let’s test the other method, SayHelloStream():

./grpcurl \
	-plaintext -d '{"name":"you"}' \
	-import-path /irisrun/repo/jrpereira/python/grpc-test \
	-proto helloworld.proto localhost:50051 \
	helloworld.MultiGreeter.SayHelloStream
And, we should got a stream with 10 greeting messages:
{

"message": "Hi you! :)"

}

{

"message": "Hi you! :)"

}

...

{

"message": "Hi you! :)"

}

Finally, let’s do a slight change on this command to use another property in the protobuf message, the num_greetings one. This property is used by the server to control how many messages will be sent in the stream.

So, this command ask the server to return only 2 messages in the stream, instead 10 by default:

./grpcurl \
	-plaintext -d '{"name":"you", "num_greetings":2}' \
	-import-path /irisrun/repo/jrpereira/python/grpc-test \
	-proto helloworld.proto localhost:50051 \
	helloworld.MultiGreeter.SayHelloStream

And this should be what you will see in the terminal:

{
  "message": "Hi you! :)"
}
{
  "message": "Hi you! :)"
}