The gRPC-Gateway plugin allows you to send JSON requests to a gRPC service. A
specially configured .proto file handles the conversion of the JSON request
into one that the gRPC service can handle. This allows you to expose RESTful-style
interfaces that communicate with a gRPC service.
This plugin’s implementation is similar to gRPC-gateway.
Unlike JSON, gRPC is a binary protocol, which uses Protobuf definitions to describe how the data is marshalled and unmarshalled. Because binary data is used instead of text, it’s a more efficient way to transmit data over a network. However, this also makes gRPC harder to work with, because inspecting what went wrong is more challenging. Additionally, few clients natively handle gRPC.
For flexibility and compatibility with RESTful expectations, the gRPC-Gateway plugin offers more configurability, whereas the gRPC-Web plugin adheres more directly to the Protobuf specification.