7.4Exploring with grpcurl

grpcurl is like curl for gRPC — essential for manual exploration and debugging.

# List available services
grpcurl -plaintext localhost:50051 list

# List methods in a service
grpcurl -plaintext localhost:50051 list user.UserService

# Describe a method
grpcurl -plaintext localhost:50051 describe user.UserService.GetUser

# Call a method
grpcurl -plaintext -d '{"id": "123"}' localhost:50051 user.UserService/GetUser

# Call with headers (metadata)
grpcurl -plaintext \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer token123" \
    -d '{"id": "123"}' \
    localhost:50051 user.UserService/GetUser

# Call without TLS (-plaintext) for local development
# Call with TLS for staging/production (omit -plaintext)
grpcurl -d '{"id": "123"}' api.staging.example.com:443 user.UserService/GetUser