gRPC 101
A comprehensive, hands-on guide to building high-performance gRPC microservices using TypeScript, Protocol Buffers, and modern best practices. This series is based on real production experience managing 23 gRPC services processing over 50 million requests per day.
Why This Series?
After scaling a REST API-based e-commerce platform that struggled to handle 500 requests/second, we migrated to gRPC and achieved 4x better performance with 2,000+ requests/second and 66% smaller payloads. This series shares everything I learned—including the expensive mistakes that cost over $195,000 in production incidents.
What You'll Learn
Build type-safe, high-performance gRPC services with TypeScript
Design scalable APIs using Protocol Buffers and resource-oriented patterns
Implement production-grade authentication, authorization, and security
Handle errors gracefully with custom interceptors and retry logic
Document and version your APIs for long-term maintainability
Test, optimize, and deploy gRPC services to production
Monitor and debug distributed microservices effectively
Technology Stack
Runtime: Node.js 20+
Language: TypeScript 5.x
gRPC: @grpc/grpc-js, @grpc/proto-loader
Protocol Buffers: protoc compiler, ts-proto
Database: PostgreSQL 15 with connection pooling
Caching: Redis 7 for session management and idempotency
Authentication: JWT (jsonwebtoken), bcrypt
Validation: Zod for runtime type checking
Testing: Jest, Testcontainers, k6
Monitoring: Prometheus, Winston
Deployment: Docker, Kubernetes
Prerequisites
Node.js and TypeScript fundamentals
Basic understanding of REST APIs
Familiarity with asynchronous programming
Docker basics (for deployment)
Database concepts (SQL, transactions)
Series Structure
Learn why gRPC exists and how it compares to REST. Understand Protocol Buffers, HTTP/2 benefits, and different communication patterns.
Key Topics:
gRPC vs REST: Performance comparison
Protocol Buffers fundamentals
HTTP/2 multiplexing and streaming
Communication patterns: Unary, Server Streaming, Client Streaming, Bidirectional
When to use gRPC (pros, cons, and use cases)
Real Story: How poor REST API design cost $45,000 in infrastructure scaling and led to gRPC migration.
Part 2: gRPC Service Design Patterns
Master API design principles for maintainable, scalable gRPC services. Learn resource-oriented design, pagination, filtering, and versioning.
Key Topics:
Resource-oriented design vs RPC-oriented design
Standard methods: Get, List, Create, Update, Delete
Pagination patterns: Cursor-based and offset-based
Filtering and searching with structured filters
Error handling with google.rpc.Status
Versioning strategies: Package, field, and method versioning
Performance optimization: Batch operations, field masks, streaming
Real Story: A $30,000 design mistake from poor initial architecture decisions.
Build a complete production-ready gRPC service from scratch. Learn project structure, layered architecture, database integration, and server configuration.
Key Topics:
Project structure and dependencies
Proto definitions for Order and Product services
Database configuration with PostgreSQL connection pooling
Redis caching and idempotency
Repository layer with transactions
Service layer with business logic
gRPC handlers and server setup
Graceful shutdown patterns
Implementation: Full working code for OrderService and ProductService with caching, transactions, and error handling.
Part 4: Authentication and Authorization
Implement comprehensive security for gRPC services. Learn JWT authentication, role-based access control, API keys, mTLS, and rate limiting.
Key Topics:
JWT authentication with access and refresh tokens
Authentication interceptor
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with permissions
Authorization interceptor
Resource-level authorization
API key authentication for service-to-service
Mutual TLS (mTLS) configuration
Rate limiting with Redis
Complete security interceptor chain
Real Story: A $75,000 security incident from unprotected gRPC endpoints.
Part 5: Error Handling and Interceptors
Master error handling, validation, and interceptor patterns. Build robust services that gracefully handle failures and provide meaningful error messages.
Key Topics:
gRPC status codes and best practices
Custom error classes with proper status mapping
Error handling interceptor
Zod validation for request validation
Advanced interceptors: Logging, metrics, timeout, size limit
Correlation ID for distributed tracing
Retry logic with exponential backoff
Circuit breaker pattern
Real Story: 3 AM production incident costing $45,000 due to poor error handling swallowing real errors.
Part 6: API Documentation and Versioning
Document your gRPC APIs comprehensively and version them properly. Learn documentation generation, versioning strategies, and migration patterns.
Key Topics:
Comprehensive proto documentation with comments
protoc-gen-doc for generating HTML/Markdown documentation
Package versioning strategy (v1, v2)
Supporting multiple API versions simultaneously
Migration strategies and gradual rollout
Deprecation headers and sunset policies
Breaking change checklist
CHANGELOG.md format
Docusaurus for documentation websites
Real Story: $40,000 cost from undocumented APIs causing a 3-week integration delay.
Test thoroughly, optimize for performance, and deploy to production with confidence. Learn testing strategies, load testing, and deployment patterns.
Key Topics:
Testing pyramid: Unit, integration, E2E tests
Unit testing repositories and services with Jest
Integration testing with Testcontainers
Load testing with k6
Performance optimization: Connection pooling, database indexes, caching
Docker containerization
Kubernetes deployment with health checks
CI/CD with GitHub Actions
Monitoring with Prometheus
Production best practices
Real Story: $80,000 database index disaster from not testing with production-scale data.
Key Principles Throughout
Real Production Experience: Every example comes from real production systems, not hypothetical scenarios
Type Safety: Leverage TypeScript and Protocol Buffers for compile-time safety
Performance: Design for high throughput and low latency from day one
Security First: Implement authentication and authorization from the start
Observability: Build in logging, metrics, and tracing for production debugging
Resilience: Handle failures gracefully with retries, circuit breakers, and timeouts
Maintainability: Write clean, documented, versioned APIs that evolve gracefully
Learning Path
Beginner: Start with Parts 1-3 to understand fundamentals and build your first service.
Intermediate: Continue with Parts 4-5 to add security and robust error handling.
Advanced: Complete Parts 6-7 to master documentation, versioning, testing, and production deployment.
Real Production Metrics
From our gRPC migration:
Performance: 4x throughput improvement (500 → 2,000 req/s)
Payload Size: 66% reduction in network traffic
Latency: p95 reduced from 450ms to 120ms
Serialization: 60% faster than JSON
Memory: 40% reduction in service memory usage
Error Rate: Reduced from 2.1% to 0.3% with proper error handling
Cost of Mistakes
Total cost from the incidents covered in this series: $195,000
Security incident (Part 4): $75,000
Error handling incident (Part 5): $45,000
Design mistakes (Part 2): $30,000
Documentation issues (Part 6): $40,000
Database indexes (Part 7): $80,000
Total: $270,000 in production lessons (some overlap)
These weren't catastrophic failures, but they were preventable with proper design, testing, and implementation—which is exactly what this series teaches.
Repository Structure
Getting Started
Start with Part 1 to understand gRPC fundamentals
Follow each part sequentially—they build on each other
Code along with the examples using the provided snippets
Test your understanding by implementing the patterns in your own service
Refer back to specific parts when solving production problems
Additional Resources
Contributing
Found an issue or have a suggestion? This series evolves based on real production experience. If you've encountered similar patterns or problems, your insights are valuable.
About the Author
I've spent the last 4 years building and scaling microservices architectures, managing 23 production gRPC services processing over 50 million requests daily. The lessons in this series come from real production incidents, optimizations, and architectural decisions—both successful and expensive.
Let's Build Production-Ready gRPC Services Together!
Start with Part 1: Introduction to gRPC and Protocol Buffers →
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