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1.8 KiB
title | author | description | monikerRange | ms.author | ms.date | uid |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Use gRPC in browser apps | jamesnk | Learn the options available to make ASP.NET Core gRPC services callable from browser apps. | >= aspnetcore-3.0 | wpickett | 08/04/2022 | grpc/browser |
Use gRPC in browser apps
It's not possible to directly call a gRPC service from a browser. gRPC uses HTTP/2 features, and no browser provides the level of control required over web requests to support a gRPC client.
gRPC on ASP.NET Core offers two browser-compatible solutions, gRPC-Web and gRPC JSON transcoding.
gRPC-Web
gRPC-Web allows browser apps to call gRPC services with the gRPC-Web client and Protobuf.
- Similar to normal gRPC, but it has a slightly different wire-protocol, which makes it compatible with HTTP/1.1 and browsers.
- Requires the browser app to generate a gRPC client from a
.proto
file. - Allows browser apps to benefit from the high-performance and low network usage of binary messages.
.NET has built-in support for gRPC-Web. For more information, see xref:grpc/grpcweb.
gRPC JSON transcoding
gRPC JSON transcoding allows browser apps to call gRPC services as if they were RESTful APIs with JSON.
- The browser app doesn't need to generate a gRPC client or know anything about gRPC.
- RESTful APIs are automatically created from gRPC services by annotating the
.proto
file with HTTP metadata. - Allows an app to support both gRPC and JSON web APIs without duplicating the effort of building separate services for both.
.NET has built-in support for creating JSON web APIs from gRPC services. For more information, see xref:grpc/json-transcoding.
[!NOTE] gRPC JSON transcoding requires .NET 7 or later.