Implementing gRPC JSON transcoding

JSON is the most popular format for services that return data to a browser or mobile device. It would be great if we could create a gRPC service and magically make it callable via non-HTTP/2 using JSON. Thankfully, there is a solution.

Microsoft has a new technology they have named gRPC JSON transcoding, which is an ASP.NET Core extension that creates HTTP endpoints with JSON for gRPC services, based on Google’s HttpRule class for their gRPC Transcoding. You can read about that at the following link: https://cloud.google.com/dotnet/docs/reference/Google.Api.CommonProtos/latest/Google.Api.HttpRule.

Enabling gRPC JSON transcoding

Let’s see how to enable gRPC JSON transcoding in our gRPC service:

1. In the Northwind.Grpc.Service project, add a package reference for gRPC JSON transcoding, as shown highlighted in the following markup:

   <ItemGroup>
     <PackageReference Include="Grpc.AspNetCore&quot...