gRPC-zig

gRPC-zig is a high-performance gRPC client and server library implemented in Zig. It emphasizes speed, low overhead, and security by including built-in JWT authentication and TLS support, along with HTTP/2 and efficient streaming. To use it, you typically run or build the Zig server in your environment and register gRPC handlers that map to your service definitions. The project provides examples for starting a server, registering a SayHello handler, and using a client to call that method. The examples demonstrate both basic server setup and basic client calls, as well as features like authentication, compression, streaming, and health checks. When you deploy, you can leverage its zero-dependency Zig implementation to minimize external runtime requirements and gain tight control over protocol behavior and performance characteristics.

Prerequisites:

• Zig compiler installed (https://ziglang.org/)
• Basic Zig project setup or familiarity with Zig build.zig files
• Optional: Docker if you prefer to run via container

Option A: Install and run natively with Zig

1. Install Zig from the official site or via your package manager.

2. Add the gRPC-zig dependency to your Zig project. You can fetch the project as a dependency or clone it locally.

   Example using zig fetch (Recommended): zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/ziglana/gRPC-zig#main

3. In your build.zig, import the grpc-zig server and client modules as shown in the repository examples:

   const GrpcServer = @import("grpc-server").GrpcServer; const GrpcClient = @import("grpc-client").GrpcClient;

4. Build and run your server, wiring up handlers as demonstrated in the Basic Server example.

Option B: Run via Docker

1. Ensure Docker is installed and running on your machine.

2. Pull and run the Zig gRPC container image:

   docker run -i ziglana/gRPC-zig

3. Use the provided container entry point or your own entry point to start the server and register handlers as in the examples.

Notes:

• If you plan to integrate authentication, refer to the JWT authentication example in the repository.
• For benchmarking and testing, you can build the included benchmark tool with Zig and run the tests as documented in the README.

Tips and considerations:

• The project emphasizes HTTP/2 support, TLS, and JWT authentication; ensure your environment has TLS certificates configured if you enable TLS.
• Compression (gzip/deflate) is supported; you can enable it for requests/responses as shown in the examples.
• Health checks are built-in, which can help during deployment to monitor service health.
• The repository provides integration tests that validate HTTP/2, gRPC flows, and authentication integration; consider running these in CI to catch regressions.
• If you use Docker, ensure the image name is correct and that network ports (default 50051) are exposed as needed in your deployment environment.