Protogen - Protobuf/gRPC-Web Wizard

Generating client/server code for gRPC-web is painful. It requires a lot of manual work with the protobuf compiler, including dealing with plugins from three different projects. Here's a no-install, all-in-one solution using temporary Docker containers.

As opposed to other projects like protobuf-ts or ts-proto, all tooling uses the official protobuf compiler and plugins.

What does it do?

It facilitates code generation for gRPC-web and protobuf-javascript. Running the example command from the grpc/grpc-web repository

protoc -I=$DIR echo.proto \
    --js_out=import_style=commonjs:$OUT_DIR \
    --grpc-web_out=import_style=commonjs,mode=grpcwebtext:$OUT_DIR

requires (1) the protoc compiler (protoc), (2) the protoc-gen-js plugin (--js_out), and (3) the protoc-gen-grpc-web plugin (--grpc-web_out).

How does it do it?

This project builds a temporary Docker container with all the binaries, then uses the local (i.e., host) .proto files for code generation and finally copies the generated files back to the host.

Usage

./protogen.sh <proto_input_dir> <proto_output_dir>

• <proto_input_dir>: Relative input directory with .proto files. Required.
• <proto_output_dir>: Relative directory to save the output .proto files. Defaults to gen/proto.

Examples

./protogen.sh proto proto_out

./protogen.sh proto