Unifying gRPC APIs under One Roof: Mastering gRPC Federation for Efficient BFFs
summary
Mercari’s open source gRPC Federation generates Go BFFs from Protocol Buffer DSL, analyzes RPC dependencies to run backend calls concurrently, and wires in OpenTelemetry tracing and logging automatically; builds use buf and generated clients. Extensions run as WebAssembly plugin system or small Go resolvers via CEL expressions for field mapping and logic. Platform reports 16 BFFs, 3 in production and support for over 100 gRPC endpoints; demo removes a secret field and the generated BFF works as advertised.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00gRPC Federation intro for BFFs
- 1:25Monolithic BFF challenges
- 2:30zpc fation for BFF automation
- 3:58zpc fation benefits
- 5:18Apollo Federation comparison
- 6:42zpc fation demo
- 10:49zpc fation DSL features
- 13:16Custom resolvers and plugins
- 15:24Developer tools and docs
- 16:07zpc fation production status
- 17:14Q&A
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