Demystifying Protocol Buffers and gRPC
summary
Claims that Protocol Buffers and RPC become web-friendly are demonstrated with three working demos (trpc, GraphQL, protobuf) of the same to‑do app; generated clients serialize as JSON over HTTP, not opaque binary, and a Go backend services the protobuf demo. The toolchain uses Protobuf ES to produce tiny TypeScript bundles, Connect Web / Connect protocol to avoid browser-incompatible gRPC features, and connect query integrated with TanStack Query to give fully inferred types and usable state management.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:53Protocol Buffers and gRPC
- 5:00Protocol Buffers for cross-language APIs
- 8:31Protocol Buffers and gRPC on the web
- 9:33Modernizing Protocol Buffers
- 10:58Demo: tRPC vs GraphQL vs Protocol Buffers
- 11:18tRPC demo
- 13:27tRPC strengths and weaknesses
- 14:29GraphQL demo
- 17:57GraphQL complexity
- 18:38Modern Protocol Buffers with Connect
- 21:04Protocol Buffers as source of truth
- 22:09Code generation
- 23:53Modern Protocol Buffers advantages
- 24:56Future developments
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