webrpc is a schema-driven approach to writing backend services for modern Web apps and networks
webrpc is a schema-driven approach to writing backend servers for the Web. Write your server's
API interface in a schema format of RIDL or JSON,
and then run webrpc-gen
to generate the networking source code for your server and client apps. From the schema,
webrpc-gen
will generate application base class types/interfaces, JSON encoders, and networking code. In doing
so, it's able to generate fully functioning and typed client libraries to communicate with your server. Enjoy
strongly-typed Web services and never having to write an API client library again.
Under the hood, webrpc is a Web service meta-protocol, schema and code-generator tool for simplifying the development of backend services for modern Web applications.
webrpc-gen -schema=example.ridl -target=golang -pkg=service -server -client -out=./service/proto.gen.go
webrpc-gen -schema=example.ridl -target=typescript -client -out=./web/client.ts
another option is to copy the hello-webrpc example, and adapt for your own webapp and server.
Btw, check out https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=XanderAppWorks.vscode-webrpc-ridl-syntax for VSCode plugin for RIDL synx highlighting.
Generator | Description | Schema | Client | Server |
---|---|---|---|---|
golang | Go 1.16+ | v1 | ✅ | ✅ |
typescript | TypeScript | v1 | ✅ | ✅ |
javascript | JavaScript (ES6) | v1 | ✅ | ✅ |
kotlin | Kotlin (coroutines, moshi, ktor) | v1 | ✅ | |
dart | Dart 3.1+ | v1 | ✅ | |
openapi | OpenAPI 3.x (Swagger) | v1 | ✅ * | ✅ * |
..contribute more! webrpc generators are just Go templates (similar to Hugo or Helm).
Here is an example webrpc schema in RIDL format (a new documentation-like format introduced by webrpc)
webrpc = v1
name = your-app
version = v0.1.0
struct User
- id: uint64
- username: string
- createdAt?: timestamp
struct UsersQueryFilter
- page?: uint32
- name?: string
- location?: string
service ExampleService
- Ping()
- Status() => (status: bool)
- GetUserByID(userID: uint64) => (user: User)
- IsOnline(user: User) => (online: bool)
- ListUsers(q?: UsersQueryFilter) => (page: uint32, users: []User)
error 100 RateLimited "too many requests" HTTP 429
error 101 DatabaseDown "service outage" HTTP 503
Generate webrpc Go server+client code:
webrpc-gen -schema=example.ridl -target=golang -pkg=main -server -client -out=./example.gen.go
and see the generated ./example.gen.go
file of types, server and client in Go. This is essentially
how the golang-basics example was built.
Example | Description |
---|---|
hello-webrpc | Go server <=> Javascript webapp |
hello-webrpc-ts | Go server <=> Typescript webapp |
golang-basics | Go server <=> Go client |
golang-nodejs | Go server <=> Node.js (Javascript ES6) client |
node-ts | Node.js server <=> Typescript webapp client |
TLDR; it's much simpler + faster to write and consume a webrpc service than traditional approaches like a REST API or gRPC service.
Writing a Web service / microservice takes a lot of work and time. REST is making me tired. There are many pieces to build -- designing the routes of your service, agreeing on conventions for the routes with your team, the request payloads, the response payloads, writing the actual server logic, routing the methods and requests to the server handlers, implementing the handlers, and then writing a client library for your desired language so it can speak to your Web service. Yikes, it's a lot of work. Want to add an additional field or handler? yea, you have to go through the entire cycle. And what about type-safety across the wire?
webrpc automates a lot the work for you. Now from a single webrpc schema file,
you can use the webrpc-gen
cli to generate source code for:
webrpc services speak JSON, as our goals are to build services that communicate with webapps. We optimize for developer experience, ease of use and productivity when building backends for modern webapps. However, webrpc also works great for service<->service communication, but it won't be as fast as gRPC in that scenario, but I'd be surprised to hear if for the majority of cases that this would be a bottleneck or costly tradeoff.
webrpc is heavily inspired by gRPC and Twirp. It is architecturally the same and has a similar workflow, but simpler. In fact, the webrpc schema is similar in design to protobuf, as in we have messages (structs) and RPC methods, but the type system is arguably more flexible and code-gen tooling is simpler. The webrpc schema is a documentation-like language for describing a server's api interface and the type system within is inspired by Go, Typescript and WASM.
We've been thinking about webrpc's design for years, and were happy to see gRPC and Twirp come onto the scene and pave the way with some great patterns. Over the years and after writing dozens of backends for Javascript-based Webapps and native mobile apps, and even built prior libraries like chi, a HTTP router for Go -- we asked ourselves:
Why have "Rails" and "Django" been such productive frameworks for writing webapps? And the answer we came to is that its productive because the server and client are the same program, running in the same process on the same computer. Rails/Django/others like it, when rendering client-state can just call a function in the same program, the client and the server are within the same domain and same state -- everything is a function-call away. Compare this to modern app development such as writing a React.js SPA or a native iOS mobile app, where the app speaks to an external API server with now the huge added effort to bridge data/runtime from one namespace (the app) to an entirely other namespace (the server). It's too much work and takes too much time, and is too brittle. There is a better way! instead of writing the code.. just generate it. If we generate all of the code to native objects in both app/server, suddenly, we can make a remote service once again feel like calling a method on the same program running on the same computer/process. Remote-Procedure-Call works!
Finally, we'd like to compare generated RPC services (gRPC/Twirp/webrpc/other) to the most common pattern to writing services by "making a RESTful API", where the machinery is similar to RPC services. Picture the flow of data when a client calls out to a server -- from a client runtime proxy-object, we encode that object, send it over the wire, the server decodes it into a server runtime proxy-object, the server handler queries the db, returns a proxy object, encodes it, and sends the function return data over the wire again. That is a ton of work, especially if you have to write it by hand and then maintain robust code in both the client and the server. Ahh, I just want to call a function on my server from my app! Save yourself the work and time, and code-generate it instead - Enter gRPC / Twirp .. and now, webrpc :)
Future goals/work:
The webrpc schema type system is inspired by Go and TypeScript, and is simple and flexible enough to cover the wide variety of language targets, designed to target RPC communication with Web applications and other Web services.
High-level features:
For more information please see the schema readme.
make build
make test
make install
MIT