This project provides a simple and easy-to-use library for working with various proto-over-http RPC protocols.

There are many proto-over-http RPC protocols, such as prpc and Twirp. Each protocol uses its own framework and runtime library. However, most of these protocols differ on the URL structure, HTTP headers, and the error format. By making these features customizable by the application, one client library can support multiple wire protocols with minimum complexity.

Most proto-over-http frameworks ues protoc plugins to generate the client and the server libraries. While such libraries provide type safety and ease of use, it is often not necessary for many RPC use cases. This library uses a different API design pattern to avoid any code generation while provide similar type safety and usability. See the following example in Go language:

With code generated client

request := &FooRequest{...}
response, err := stub.Foo(ctx, request)

Without code generated client

request := &FooRequest{...}
response := &FooResponse{}
err := client.Call(ctx, "Foo", request, response)

Conceptually, we use printf() like experience for making RPC calls. By having an extra parameter to specify the method name, we can avoid codegen completely. While printf() may not provide type safety, developers hardly ever get it wrong. This library brings the same experience to RPC calls.

Currently, this repository only contains the Go client implementation. It needs to be integrated with an auth library for real use cases.

Since the library has less than 200 lines of code, it should be easy to replicate the experience to another programming languages as long as there is proto3 library support for that language.