gRPC Proxy

proxying gRPC traffic: gRPC client -> APISIX -> gRPC/gRPCS server

Parameters

• scheme: the scheme of the route's upstream must be grpc or grpcs.
• uri: format likes /service/method, Example：/helloworld.Greeter/SayHello

Example

create proxying gRPC route

Here's an example, to proxying gRPC service by specified route:

• attention: the scheme of the route's upstream must be grpc or grpcs.
• attention: APISIX use TLS‑encrypted HTTP/2 to expose gRPC service, so need to config SSL certificate
• attention: APISIX also support to expose gRPC service with plaintext HTTP/2, which does not rely on TLS, usually used to proxy gRPC service in intranet environment
• the grpc server example：grpc_server_example

note

You can fetch the admin_key from config.yaml and save to an environment variable with the following command:

admin_key=$(yq '.deployment.admin.admin_key[0].key' conf/config.yaml | sed 's/"//g')

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
    "methods": ["POST", "GET"],
    "uri": "/helloworld.Greeter/SayHello",
    "upstream": {
        "scheme": "grpc",
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:50051": 1
        }
    }
}'

testing HTTP/2 with TLS‑encrypted

Invoking the route created before：

$ grpcurl -insecure -import-path /pathtoprotos  -proto helloworld.proto  -d '{"name":"apisix"}' 127.0.0.1:9443 helloworld.Greeter.SayHello
{
  "message": "Hello apisix"
}

grpcurl is a CLI tool, similar to curl, that acts as a gRPC client and lets you interact with a gRPC server. For installation, please check out the official documentation.

This means that the proxying is working.

testing HTTP/2 with plaintext

By default, the APISIX only listens to 9443 for TLS‑encrypted HTTP/2. You can support HTTP/2 with plaintext via the node_listen section under apisix in conf/config.yaml:

apisix:
    node_listen:
        - port: 9080
        - port: 9081
    enable_http2: true

Invoking the route created before：

$ grpcurl -plaintext -import-path /pathtoprotos  -proto helloworld.proto  -d '{"name":"apisix"}' 127.0.0.1:9081 helloworld.Greeter.SayHello
{
  "message": "Hello apisix"
}

This means that the proxying is working.

gRPCS

If your gRPC service encrypts with TLS by itself (so called gPRCS, gPRC + TLS), you need to change the scheme to grpcs. The example above runs gRPCS service on port 50052, to proxy gRPC request, we need to use the configuration below:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
    "methods": ["POST", "GET"],
    "uri": "/helloworld.Greeter/SayHello",
    "upstream": {
        "scheme": "grpcs",
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:50052": 1
        }
    }
}'