grpcexp

grpcexp is an interactive explorer for interacting with grpc servers. It's basically a tui on top of grpcurl.

Installation

Linux or MacOS

You can install the latest version of grpcexp by running the following command in your terminal.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prnvbn/grpcexp/main/installer.sh)"

Move the binary to a directory in your PATH. For e.g. /usr/local/bin on linux.

via homebrew

You can install grpcexp using the prnvbn/homebrew-tap.

brew install prnvbn/tap/grpcexp

via go install

go install github.com/prnvbn/grpcexp/cmd/grpcexp@latest

Windows

Windows installation instructions are a WIP. In the meantime, you can download the latest release from the releases page

[!NOTE]

To update grpcexp to the latest version, simply re-run any of the installation methods above. They always install the most recent release.

Enabling Command Autocompletion

To enable autocomplete, add the following to your .bashrc or .bash_profile file:

# you can also generate completions for zsh and fish shells by replacing bash with zsh or fish
source <(grpcexp completion bash)

Why

Let me preface this by saying, I really like grpcurl but have a few nits:

<details> <summary>I have to run ~5 commands to make one grpc call</summary>

$ grpcurl -plaintext :50051 list
grpc.reflection.v1.ServerReflection
grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflection
helloworld.Greeter

$ grpcurl -plaintext :50051 list helloworld.Greeter
helloworld.Greeter.SayHello

$ grpcurl -plaintext :50051 describe helloworld.Greeter.SayHello
helloworld.Greeter.SayHello is a method:
rpc SayHello ( .helloworld.HelloRequest ) returns ( .helloworld.HelloReply );

$ grpcurl -plaintext :50051 describe helloworld.HelloRequest
helloworld.HelloRequest is a message:
message HelloRequest {
string name = 1;
}

$ grpcurl -plaintext -d '{"name": "joe"}' :50051 helloworld.Greeter.SayHello
{
"message": "Hello joe"
}

</details> <details> <summary>the lack of POSIX/GNU-style --flags</summary>

personal taste.

</details> <details> <summary>manual JSON construction for complex types</summary>

With grpcurl, you have to manually construct JSON for nested messages, maps, lists, and oneofs which is very tedious.

</details>

Contributing

Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request. I'm always open to suggestions and improvements :)