grpctl

A grpc_cli inspired utility that attempts to provide a more natural command-line experience for any gRPC service.

Usage

Installation

grpctl can be installed via Homebrew on both mac and linux:

brew install --HEAD njhale/tap/grpctl

Configuring a server

Before it can talk to a gRPC server, grpctl needs to know where to find it.

Create a server configuration and set the address used:

$ grpctl config set snoot address localhost:50051

Here we've configured the snoot server to connect to localhost:50051.

Note: the name "server" is reserved and cannot be used as the name of a user set server.

Interacting with a server

Once an address is registered for a server, its name can be used as a direct subcommand of grpctl.

Following along with the previous example, run the new snoot server subcommand with the --help option to see what methods it provides:

$ grpctl snoot --help
my favorite service!

Usage:
  grpctl snoot [command]

Available Commands:
  boop        boop a snoot
  list        list all snoots

Flags:
  -h, --help  help for snoot

Method commands

The methods of a service exposed by a configured server are made direct subcommands of that server's command if they are unique among all other services exposed by that server.

Service commands

The services exposed by a server are always made direct subcommands of that server's command.

Service commands are hidden unless they share method names with other services from the same server.

Command discovery

By default, grpctl will try to use gRPC server reflection to discover available services at runtime, but it can also be configured to use a local .proto file as well.

Source the snoot service's service definitions from snoot.proto:

$ grpctl config set snoot proto snoot.proto