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Introduction🎯
This blog will discuss everything about gRPC requests in Ready API. We will start with brushing up on some basic concepts of API and requests in API. This will ensure a better understanding of gRPC requests in Ready API. We will further look into ways of adding the gRPC requests to our project.
So what are you waiting for?🤷♀️ Let's dive deep into the topic!
In this part, we will brush up on our basic knowledge of APIs and the concepts associated with them.
What Is An API❓
Before going directly to the gRPC requests in Ready API, let us first have a brief idea of API. API stands for Application Programming Interface. The full form has three main terms: application, programming, and interface. API acts as an intermediate software between two applications and helps them communicate.
An API can be understood as a messenger between the application and the user. The data is sent to the server whenever a user uses an application. The job of the application is to provide the required data by the user. The processes between sending the data to the server and the server retrieving and interpreting the data and then sending the required result are all done via an API.
What Are Requests In API🤷♀️
APIs provide the user with a way for the two applications to communicate. This produces the required result. This is a client-server-based approach. The client sends the request to the server. The server interprets the request, performs the necessary actions, and then sends the data to the user as a result. The request has an HTTP request method and URL of the API endpoint. These methods precisely tell the server what actions it has to perform. Some examples are as follows:
1️⃣GET request: It fetches some information from the API
2️⃣POST request: It sends some data to the API.
3️⃣DELETE request: As the name suggests, it is used to delete some data from the API.
What Is Ready API❓
Ready API is a particular type of API whose main purpose is to test REST(Representational State Transfer), SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol), JMS(Java Message Service), GraphQL, and JDBC(Java Database Connectivity) services.
gRPC Requests In Ready API⭕
Now that we have basic knowledge about the prerequisites let us explore the gRPC requests in Ready API. gRPC was created by Google. It is a procedure-calling system. It can be understood as a function call. Its primary purpose is to allow the client to call methods on a server through a network connection. Ready API sends the requests with some specified parameters. It uses protocol buffers majorly. There are four operations in the gRPC, but Ready API only supports the Unary operation. In a unary operation, only a single request is sent to the server, and the server sends a single response. The other three operations in gRPC are
1️⃣Server Streaming: In this type of streaming, the client sends a single request to the server. The server sends a stream of information to the user in response.
2️⃣Bidirectional Streaming: In this type of streaming, the user sends a stream of data to the server. The server also sends a stream of data as the result.
3️⃣Client Streaming: In this, the client sends the stream of data as a request to the server and waits for the response of the server.
Ready API also supports the .proto files.
What Are Protocol Buffers🙄
This section will discuss the protocol buffers in gRPC requests and their need. Protocol buffers are nothing but the mechanism that describes data in a structured manner. It is used in the Ready API mainly for the following reasons
1️⃣Protocol Buffers help the user to understand what functions he can access from the server.
2️⃣Protocol buffers are necessary for gRPC requests in Ready API to serialize and deserialize the messages.
The user must ensure that he has the latest version of the google protocol buffers.
Google protocol buffer can be included in the following manner by editing the import statements in the .proto file. It can be done as:
Accessing the gRPC services ask for a license. You must have a ReadyAPI test pro license before getting started with accessing these services. If you do not have the license or do not want to use it now, don't worry, you can go with the ReadyAPI free trial.
gRPC Requests In Ready API📍
⭕Firstly the user has to send the requests to the server in order to get the desired results. For this purpose, the user has to go through the API Connection test. API connection test is nothing but a protocol used to send requests and interpret the results of various APIs.
⭕When we import the protocol buffers in the API, the Ready API shows all the operations in the Navigator tree.
Adding The gRPC Requests In Ready API Project✍
The steps for adding gRPC requests in a project are as follows.
1️⃣Go to the APIs node and click on the three horizontal line icons.
2️⃣Select the Import API Definition option.
3️⃣The definition can be stored either online or on your personal device. If the definition is stored online paste its URL in the URL section. For the latter option, go to my computer tab and enter the path to the .proto file.
4️⃣Click on the Import API option.
Some Of The Authentications in The gRPC Services
Learning about the authentication and its protocols in gRPC services is important. There are some built-in authentication systems in the gRPC services that the Ready API uses. Let us explore them 🎯
⭕Transport Layer Security: This is used to authenticate a server and verify the information interpreted by it.
⭕Google OAuth 2.0: This is a special authentication system by Google. This authorization system is based on tokens. This method also sends messages over the transport layer security.
We hope you are now well versed with gRPC requests in Ready API🎯
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the four types of API?
The four types of APIs are public, composite, private, and partner API.
What are some examples of the API?
Some common API examples are Twitter bots, weather snippets, travel booking, etc.
What are some of the best languages for API?
Some of the best languages for APIs are ava, perl, python, ruby, etc.
Which one out of REST and gRPC is faster and why?
gRPC is much faster than REST due to the presence of the protocol buffers in gRPC.
Is gRPC synchronous or asynchronous?
gRPC is available in both forms, synchronous and asynchronous.
Conclusion
In this blog, we explored everything about API, requests in API, and other basic concepts. We then explored the gRPC requests in detail. We discussed protocol buffers and authentication systems in the gRPC. We finally proceeded with the implementation of the gRPC requests in Ready API by adding it to our project.
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