What is the difference between REST and gRPC?

REST and gRPC are two different approaches to organizing interaction between services.

• REST is an architectural style that uses the HTTP protocol and standard methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Data is usually transmitted in JSON or XML format. REST is simple to implement and widely supported, but may be less efficient due to the text format and lack of a strict schema.

• gRPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) framework that uses HTTP/2 and the Protobuf binary protocol for data serialization. It provides high performance, streaming support, and strict typing.

Example of calling a gRPC service in Go:

// Example of a gRPC client
conn, err := grpc.Dial("localhost:50051", grpc.WithInsecure())
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Failed to connect: %v", err)
}
defer conn.Close()
client := pb.NewYourServiceClient(conn)
response, err := client.YourMethod(context.Background(), &pb.YourRequest{Param: "value"})
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Call error: %v", err)
}
fmt.Println(response.Result)

Thus, REST is simpler and more universal, while gRPC is more efficient and suitable for high-performance microservices.