Reflections Service not implemented

[chrispsommers]

I tried grpc_cli ls per your instructions (I'm familiar with it). Seems like Reflections was not installed in the server? BTW grpc_call... worked fine. This is a cool project,thanks.

~/angular-nest-grpc$ grpc_cli ls  localhost:50051
D0519 18:36:43.332412210    5696 ev_posix.cc:169]            Using polling engine: epollex
D0519 18:36:43.332473558    5696 dns_resolver.cc:338]        Using native dns resolver
D0519 18:36:43.332562163    5696 dns_resolver.cc:279]        Start resolving.
I0519 18:36:43.333143564    5696 subchannel.cc:841]          New connected subchannel at 0xca4970 for subchannel 0x7f6608002e80
Received an error when querying services endpoint.
I0519 18:36:43.333755422    5696 proto_reflection_descriptor_database.cc:47] Reflection request not implemented; is the ServerReflection service enabled?
I0519 18:36:43.333767009    5696 proto_reflection_descriptor_database.cc:51] ServerReflectionInfo rpc failed. Error code: 12, details: RPC method not implemented /grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflection/ServerReflectionInfo
```

[kmturley]

Thanks Chris, glad the project is useful!

I wasn't aware of Reflection functionality but found the documentation: "The primary usecase for server reflection is to write (typically) command line debugging tools for talking to a grpc server." https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/doc/server-reflection.md

I'm not familiar with the approach, buts seems by reading that article that it is not implemented in NodeJS yet. The issue open for it: https://github.com/grpc/grpc-node/issues/79

So it doesn't looks like I can add support for it. Unless using a library like Protobuf.js which seems to support: https://github.com/protobufjs/protobuf.js#using-reflection-only

But I'm using NestJS which is it's own framework!

[chrispsommers]

Hi @kmturley , Yeah, you have to enable Reflections as a service into the gRPC server itself. It's shame this doesn't come baked into nodejs or NestJs. It's a piece of cake in Python, a couple lines of code. I love it. I actually don't intend to use a JS-based server so this isn't a problem for me. I do want to try Angular, grpc-web and envoy, but with a different gRPC server, not necessarily even under my control. So your project is a great starting point. I especially like how you illustrated using docker-compose to make it a snap to get going.

Thanks, Chris.

[kmturley]

No problem! If I have time I will definitely investigate this though, seems like it could be a useful feature.

The docker compose file makes it really quick and portable! Should be easy to swap out for a python server!