gRPCurl Engineering at Fullstory

grpcurl is a command-line tool designed to interact with gRPC servers, enabling users to invoke RPC methods directly from the terminal. It serves as a versatile alternative to curl for gRPC services, which rely on binary protocol buffer (protobuf) encoding.

Key Features:

• JSON Input Handling: Accepts JSON-formatted requests, simplifying interaction for humans and scripts without requiring knowledge of protobuf syntax.
• Service Schema Exploration: Browses gRPC service definitions via server reflection, proto source files, or protoset files, enabling schema-based request validation and transformation.
• Streaming Support: Handles unary, client-streaming, server-streaming, and bidirectional streaming RPC methods, including interactive usage in terminals.
• TLS Configuration: Supports secure communication with options for mutual TLS, custom certificate authorities, and plaintext connections.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Installable via winget, ensuring accessibility across supported environments.

Audience & Benefit: Ideal for developers, DevOps engineers, and API testers working with gRPC services. grpcurl streamlines testing, debugging, and exploration of gRPC endpoints without the need to write custom client code, enhancing productivity and efficiency in development workflows.