expose gRPC as gRPC web

[ctaggart]

Building off of rfc Ingress Support #629

As an operator, I would like to expose a set of gRPC based services to the outside world for use in web applications by having conduit expose the services as gRPC web.

Basically, something similar to what Envoy is building:
https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/http_filters/grpc_web_filter#config-http-filters-grpc-web

Web applications can then consume the gRPC web services using tools like https://www.npmjs.com/package/ts-protoc-gen

[grampelberg]

Cool! It looks like this is via. Envoy's gRPC-Web support.

[ctaggart]

A cool live example of gRPC web being used in the browser is https://grpcweb.jbrandhorst.com/

[hartmut-co-uk]

+1
there's been a lot of movement over the past few days
https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web

[hartmut-co-uk]

ah on a side note - I just noticed the example/showcase page is built on the

Improbable gRPC-Web implementation https://github.com/improbable-eng/grpc-web

Same as people with Google internally Improbably were came up with, designed and built a 'grpc web' solution for the browser - were the first to OpenSource and share their work
...collaborated and contributed with the grpc team to spec out the future 'official?' grpc-web protocol: https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/doc/PROTOCOL-WEB.md

I do hope I'm not saying anything wrong - anyone please let me know if that would be the case!

References:
https://improbable.io/games/blog/grpc-web-moving-past-restjson-towards-type-safe-web-apis
https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web/blob/master/ROADMAP.md
https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web/blob/master/BROWSER-FEATURES.md

[ctaggart]

Also worth mentioning the Rust based tower-grpc by contributes here too. I've been watching and reading from the sidelines. I'm really looking forward to how this plays out.

• @seanmonstar warp
• @carllerche Announcing Tower — A library for writing robust network services with Rust.

[hartmut-co-uk]

hot off the press - to clarify above grpc/grpc-web vs. improbable-eng/grpc-web - they actually do Inter-op..
grpc/grpc-web#91

[grampelberg]

@hartmut-co-uk have you taken a look at google/rejoiner ? Does something like that make sense or are you looking for grpc/grpc-web specifically?

[hartmut-co-uk]

thx @grampelberg, was specifically for grpc/grpc-web

[ctaggart]

Congrats on Linkerd 2! I enjoyed this presentation by @klingerf and will probably try it out soon. I like seeing GRPC status next to HTTP status:

https://youtu.be/3Fpa2Z_r4nE?t=24m26s

We currently have nginx sidecars for our services providing TLS termination. I'm interested in replacing the sidecars with Linkerd 2, but I'd really like to see this feature added so I don't have to wedge another proxy in between such as the gRPC-Web Go Proxy.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[hartmut-co-uk]

not stale

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[grampelberg]

For now, the decision is to have grpc-web run as a separate proxy instead of moving that functionality into the linkerd proxy directly.

[ejemba]

Hi @grampelberg, I'm new to linkerd2 and grpc-web. I'm willing to use linkerd2 with grpc-web.
Can you just describe what you mean by « run as a separate proxy » what will be the proxy here ?
thank you

[grampelberg]

@ejemba the grpc-web project recommends Envoy, but there is also grpc-web.

[ejemba]

Thank you @grampelberg . I'll try to find some relevant projects to base me on.