gRPC in 3 minutes (C#)

BACKGROUND

This is a different version of the helloworld example, using the old-style .csproj files supported by VS2013 and VS2015 (and older versions of mono). You can still use gRPC with the old-style .csproj files, but using the new-style .csproj projects (supported by VS2017 and dotnet SDK) is recommended.

For this sample, we've already generated the server and client stubs from helloworld.proto.

Example projects depend on the Grpc, Grpc.Tools and Google.Protobuf NuGet packages which have been already added to the project for you.

PREREQUISITES

• Windows: .NET Framework 4.5+, Visual Studio 2013 or 2015
• Linux: Mono 4+, MonoDevelop 5.9+
• Mac OS X: Xamarin Studio 5.9+

BUILD

• Open solution Greeter.sln with Visual Studio, Monodevelop (on Linux) or Xamarin Studio (on Mac OS X)

Using Visual Studio

• Build the solution (this will automatically download NuGet dependencies)

Using Monodevelop or Xamarin Studio

The nuget add-in available for Xamarin Studio and Monodevelop IDEs is too old to download all of the nuget dependencies of gRPC.

Using these IDEs, a workaround is as follows:

• Obtain a nuget executable for your platform and update it with nuget update -self.
• Navigate to this directory and run nuget restore.
• Now that packages have been restored into their proper package folder, build the solution from your IDE.

Try it!

• Run the server

  > cd GreeterServer/bin/Debug
  > GreeterServer.exe
  

• Run the client

  > cd GreeterClient/bin/Debug
  > GreeterClient.exe
  

You can also run the server and client directly from the IDE.

On Linux or Mac, use mono GreeterServer.exe and mono GreeterClient.exe to run the server and client.

Tutorial

You can find a more detailed tutorial in gRPC Basics: C#