grpc_proxy

grpc-proxy

grpc-proxy is a minimal configuration library that acts as a local HTTP proxy and transparently proxies all gRPC requests to the requested destination. A gRPC StreamClientInterceptor can be registered which will be called for all requests and lets you do anything that gRPC middleware can do.

For example you can build applications that:

• Dump request metadata (e.g. grpc-dump).
• Respond to requests using saved/mocked responses (e.g. grpc-fixture).
• Modify request contents before it is sent to the server and modify the server response before it is returned to the client.

Basic example

grpc-proxy is super simple to use, this short snippet is a simplified version of grpc-dump that logs the service names of all intercepted methods:

package main

import (
	"flag"
	"fmt"
	"github.com/bradleyjkemp/grpc-tools/grpc-proxy"
	"google.golang.org/grpc"
)

func main() {
	grpc_proxy.RegisterDefaultFlags()
	flag.Parse()
	proxy, _ := grpc_proxy.New(
        grpc_proxy.WithInterceptor(intercept),
        grpc_proxy.DefaultFlags(),
    )
    proxy.Start()
}

func intercept(srv interface{}, ss grpc.ServerStream, info *grpc.StreamServerInfo, handler grpc.StreamHandler) error {
	fmt.Println(info.FullMethod)
	return handler(srv, ss)
}

Features

• Acts as a HTTP proxy silently intercepting traffic from all applications that support HTTP proxies.
• Supports both gRPC and gRPC-Web and both Streaming and Unary RPCs.
• Serves TLS and non-TLS traffic on a single port.
• Gracefully falls back to proxying the raw request if it cannot be silently intercepted (e.g. it isn't being run with a valid TLS certificate for the domain)
• Fallback mode for applications that do not support HTTP proxies: applications can be pointed at the proxy directly and an explicit destination specified that all requests will be forwarded to.

Troubleshooting

Application requests aren't being intercepted

grpc-proxy can only intercept requests if the application supports HTTP proxies. The standard gRPC libraries support HTTP proxies by default but applications can override this behaviour by using a custom Dialer.

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check whether the application supports HTTP proxies, if your application does not support HTTP proxies, go straight to the instructions for using grpc-proxy in fallback mode.

2. Check your application is configured to use the HTTP proxy. This is normally done by setting the http_proxy or all_proxy environment variable to the address grpc-proxy is listening on (e.g. http_proxy=http://localhost:12345).

   Some applications interpret these environment variables differently, you may have to set both http_proxy and https_proxy to point to grpc-proxy.

3. Try using grpc-proxy as your system proxy. This will mean traffic from all applications will go through the proxy. You can find instructions for this here.

   Warning: this may cause other applications to not work properly if grpc-proxy is unable to proxy its requests properly. It's preferable to only configure the target application to use the proxy to minimise potential disruption.

4. Try using grpc-proxy in fallback mode instead (see below for details).

Using grpc-proxy in fallback mode

For applications that do not work with HTTP proxies, grpc-proxy can act as an explicit proxy server.

Rather than letting grpc-proxy try to transparently intercept requests you should configure your application to connect directly to your proxy and use the Destination setting to tell grpc-proxy to send all traffic to the specified host.