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Draft the wire protocol spec for Twirp based on latest discussions. It reflects the existing Twirp wire spec, plus best practice from proto3, gRPC, HTTP, and JSON. The spec should be usable for developers to build clients and servers using Twirp wire protocol without much dependency.
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# Twirp Wire Protocol | ||
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This document defines the Twirp wire protocol over HTTP. | ||
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## Conventions | ||
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The requirement level keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", | ||
"SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", | ||
and "OPTIONAL" used in this document are to be interpreted as | ||
described in [RFC 2119](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt). | ||
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The grammar rules used in this document are using [ABNF | ||
syntax](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5234). | ||
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## Overview | ||
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The Twirp wire protocol is a simple RPC protocol based on HTTP and | ||
Protocol Buffers (proto). The protocol uses HTTP URLs to specify the | ||
RPC endpoints, and sends/receives proto messages as HTTP | ||
request/response bodies. | ||
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To use Twirp, developers first define their APIs using proto files, | ||
then use Twirp tools to generate the client and the server libraries. | ||
The generated libraries implement the Twirp wire protocol, using the | ||
standard HTTP library provided by the programming language runtime or | ||
the operating system. Once the client and the server are implemented, | ||
the client can communicate with the server by making RPC calls. | ||
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The Twirp wire protocol supports both binary and JSON encodings of | ||
proto messages, and works with any HTTP client and any HTTP version. | ||
However, certain capabilities may be limited by the actual HTTP | ||
library being used. | ||
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### URLs | ||
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**URL ::= Base-URL "/" [ Package "." ] Interface "/" Method** | ||
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The Twirp wire protocol uses HTTP URLs to directly specify the RPC | ||
endpoints on the server for sending the requests. such direct mapping | ||
makes the request routing simple and efficient. The Twirp URLs have | ||
the following components. | ||
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* **Base-URL** is the virtual location of a Twirp API server, which is | ||
typically published via API documentation or service discovery. For | ||
example, "https://example.com/apis". | ||
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* **Package** is the proto `package` name for an API, which is often | ||
considered as an API version. For example, | ||
`example.calendar.v1`. This component is omitted if the API | ||
definition doesn't have a package name. | ||
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* **Interface** is the proto `service` name for an API. For example, | ||
`CalendarService`. | ||
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* **Method** is the proto `rpc` name for an API method. For example, | ||
`CreateEvent`. | ||
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### Requests | ||
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**Request ::= Request-Headers Request-Body** | ||
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Twirp always uses HTTP POST method to send requests, because it | ||
closely matches the semantics of RPC methods. | ||
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The **Request-Headers** are normal HTTP headers. The Twirp wire | ||
protocol uses the following headers. | ||
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* **Authorization** header is often used to pass user credentials | ||
from the client to the server, such as OAuth access token or | ||
JWT token. | ||
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* **Content-Type** header indicates the proto message encoding, which | ||
should be one of "application/x-protobuf", "application/json". The | ||
server uses this value to decide how to parse the request body, | ||
and encode the response body. | ||
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* **User-Agent** header indicates the client application and its | ||
runtime environment. While the server should not use this | ||
information for request processing, this header is heavily used | ||
for analytics and troubleshooting purposes. | ||
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* **RPC-Timeout** header indicates the client-specified request | ||
timeout in seconds, such as "10". If **RPC-Timeout** is omitted, the | ||
server should use a pre-configured timeout value, by default it | ||
should be 10 seconds. | ||
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The **Request-Body** is the encoded request message, contained in the | ||
HTTP request body. The encoding is specified by the `Content-Type` | ||
header. | ||
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### Responses | ||
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**Response ::= Response-Headers Response-Body** | ||
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The **Response-Headers** are just normal HTTP response headers. The | ||
Twirp wire protocol uses the following headers. | ||
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* **Content-Type** The value should be either "application/x-protobuf" | ||
or "application/json" to indicate the encoding of the response | ||
message. It must match the "Content-Type" header in the request. | ||
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The **Request-Body** is the encoded response message contained in the | ||
HTTP response body. The encoding is specified by the `Content-Type` | ||
header. | ||
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## Example | ||
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The following example shows a simple Echo API definition and its | ||
corresponding wire payloads. | ||
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The example assumes the server base URL is "https://example.com". | ||
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```proto | ||
package twirp; | ||
service Echo { | ||
rpc Hello(HelloRequest) returns (HelloResponse); | ||
} | ||
message HelloRequest { | ||
string message; | ||
} | ||
message HelloResponse { | ||
string message; | ||
} | ||
``` | ||
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**Proto Request** | ||
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``` | ||
POST /twirp/Echo/Hello HTTP/1.1 | ||
Host: example.com | ||
Content-Type: application/x-protobuf | ||
Content-Length: 15 | ||
<encoded HelloRequest> | ||
``` | ||
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**JSON Request** | ||
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``` | ||
POST /twirp/Echo/Hello HTTP/1.1 | ||
Host: example.com | ||
Content-Type: application/json | ||
Content-Length: 27 | ||
{"message":"Hello, World!"} | ||
``` | ||
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**Proto Response** | ||
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``` | ||
HTTP/1.1 200 OK | ||
Content-Type: application/x-protobuf | ||
Content-Length: 15 | ||
<encoded HelloResponse> | ||
``` | ||
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**JSON Response** | ||
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``` | ||
HTTP/1.1 200 OK | ||
Content-Type: application/json | ||
Content-Length: 27 | ||
{"message":"Hello, World!"} | ||
``` | ||
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## Errors | ||
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If an error occurs when the server processes a request, the server | ||
must return an error payload as the response message, and correctly | ||
set the HTTP status code. Please see | ||
[`google.rpc.Code`](https://github.com/googleapis/googleapis/blob/master/google/rpc/code.proto) | ||
on how to map typical server errors to HTTP status codes. | ||
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### Timeout errors | ||
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For a single request, there is a client-specified timeout and a | ||
server-configured timeout. If a request misses the server-configured | ||
timeout, the server must return a `503` error. If a request misses | ||
the client-specified timeout that it is shorter then the server- | ||
configured timeout, the server must return a `504` error. | ||
This allows more accurate measurement of the server availability. | ||
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### Network errors | ||
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If a client fails to reach the server due to network errors, the | ||
client library must report HTTP status code `502` to the client | ||
application. This helps users distinguishing network errors from | ||
server errors. |