grpc-client-cli is a generic gRPC command line client - call any gRPC service. If your service exposes gRPC Reflection service the tool will discover all services and methods automatically. If not, please specify --proto parameter with the path to proto files.

Download the binary and install it to /usr/local directory:

• Linux: curl -L https://github.com/vadimi/grpc-client-cli/releases/download/v1.21.1/grpc-client-cli_linux_x86_64.tar.gz | tar -C /usr/local/bin -xz (you might need to add sudo before tar)
• macOS: curl -L https://github.com/vadimi/grpc-client-cli/releases/download/v1.21.1/grpc-client-cli_darwin_x86_64.tar.gz | tar -C /usr/local/bin -xz

For go 1.17 use this command to install the app to $GOPATH/bin directory:

• go install github.com/vadimi/grpc-client-cli/cmd/[email protected]
• go install github.com/vadimi/grpc-client-cli/cmd/grpc-client-cli@latest

Just specify a connection string to a service in host:port format and follow instructions to select service, method and enter request message in json or proto text format.

grpc-client-cli localhost:4400 or grpc-client-cli --address localhost:4400

In this case the service needs to expose gRPC Reflection service.

For full list of supported command line args please run grpc-client-cli -h.

To provide the list of services to call specify --proto parameter and --protoimports in case an additional directory for imports is required:

grpc-client-cli --proto /path/to/proto/files localhost:5050

The tool also supports :authority header override.

grpc-client-cli --authority localhost:9090 localhost:5050

It's also possible to capture some of the diagnostic information like request and response sizes, call duration:

grpc-client-cli -V localhost:4400

Proto text format for input and output:

grpc-client-cli --informat text --outformat text localhost:5050

grpc-client-cli provides integrated support for services published to a Eureka service registry.

Connecting to a service published to Eureka running on http://localhost:8761/eureka/

grpc-client-cli eureka://application-name/

Connecting to a service running remotely on http://example.com:8761/eureka/

grpc-client-cli eureka://example.com/eureka/application-name/

Connecting to a service running remotely on http://example.com:9500/not-eureka/

grpc-client-cli eureka://example.com:9500/not-eureka/application-name/

The Eureka currently connects to services using the IP Addresses published in the service registry and the following published ports, in order:

• Metadata key "grpc"
• Metadata key "grpc.port"
• Default insecure port

If you require a different default port, please file an issue, and that port will be considered for inclusion.

discover - print service protobuf contract

grpc-client-cli discover localhost:5050
grpc-client-cli -s User discover localhost:5050

health - call health check service, this command returns non-zero exit code in case health check returns NOT_SERVING response or the call fails for any other reason, so it's useful for example in kubernetes health probes

grpc-client-cli health localhost:5050

grpc-client-cli --address localhost:5050 health

In non-interactive mode grpc-client-cli expects all parameters to be passed to execute gRPC service.

Pass message json through stdin

echo '{"user_id": "12345"}' | grpc-client-cli -service UserService -method GetUser localhost:5050

cat message.json | grpc-client-cli -service UserService -method GetUser localhost:5050

On windows this could be achieved using type command

type message.json | grpc-client-cli -service UserService -method GetUser localhost:5050

Input file

Another option of providing a file with message json is -input (or -i) parameter:

grpc-client-cli -service UserService -method GetUser -i message.json localhost:5050

To enable autocompletion in your terminal add the following commands to your .bashrc or .zshrc files.

ZSH

PROG=grpc-client-cli
_CLI_ZSH_AUTOCOMPLETE_HACK=1
source  autocomplete/zsh_autocomplete

Bash

PROG=grpc-client-cli
source autocomplete/bash_autocomplete

autocomplete directory is located in the root of the repo. Please find more details here.

Most of the fields in proto message can be intuitively mapped to json types. There are some exclusions though:

1. Timestamp mapped to a string in ISO 8601 format.

For example:

{
  "flight_start_date": "2018-03-19T00:00:00.0Z"
}

2. Duration mapped to a string representation in seconds.

For example:

{
  "start_time": "72000s",
  "some_other_duration": "1s"
}