Integrating gRPC with Ruby on Rails: A Fusion of Technologies for Enhanced Web Development

Integrating gRPC with Ruby on Rails

Alessio Bussolari
3 min readNov 21, 2023

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In the world of modern microservices architectures, efficient inter-service communication is crucial. gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Call) is a high-performance, language-agnostic framework that provides an efficient way for services to communicate with each other. In this article, we’ll explore how to integrate gRPC into a Ruby on Rails application, enabling seamless and performant communication between services.

What is gRPC?

gRPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) framework developed by Google. It uses HTTP/2 for transport and Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) as its interface definition language. This combination offers several advantages, such as high performance, language-agnostic support, and strong typing. gRPC is well-suited for building efficient microservices because it allows services to communicate with minimal overhead.

Setting up a Ruby on Rails Project

Before we dive into integrating gRPC, let’s set up a Ruby on Rails project if you don’t have one already. You can create a new Rails project using the following command:

rails new my_grpc_app

Once your Rails project is ready, let’s proceed to integrate gRPC.

Adding gRPC to Your Rails Application

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Alessio Bussolari

Ruby on Rails programmer since 2009. Current CTO at COSMIC SRL, where I lead the team in creating innovative solutions.