gRPC

There are no gRPC client for the browser. (Protocol Buffers does not support the browser.)

This means we cannot call gRPC endpoints directly from the browser; we always need to call gRPC endpoints from our Node.js server.

For fetching data, we can simply use a onBeforeRender() hook, since onBeforeRender() hooks are called in Node.js.

For mutating data:

  1. We create a new HTTP endpoint. For example, if we use Express.js:
    // Environment: server
     
    import express from 'express'
     
    const app = express()
    app.use(express.json()) // Parse the HTTP request body as JSON
     
    app.post('/mutations/updateText', (req, res) => {
      const { text } = req.body
      // We can call gRPC endpoints here
    })
  2. We then call our HTTP endpoint from the browser.
    // Environment: browser
     
    const body = JSON.stringify({ text: 'Some new text' })
    await fetch('/mutations/updateText', { body })