grpc vs http: What are the differences?

Introduction:
gRPC and HTTP are both communication protocols used in web development. While both serve the purpose of enabling communication between systems, they have key differences that set them apart.

1. **Data serialization**: gRPC uses protocol buffers for data serialization, which is more efficient and smaller in size compared to JSON used in HTTP. This leads to faster data transmission and decreased latency in gRPC.
2. **Streaming**: gRPC supports both unary and streaming types of calls, allowing for bidirectional streaming of data. HTTP, on the other hand, primarily follows the request-response model, limiting its streaming capabilities.
3. **Protocol**: gRPC uses HTTP/2 as its underlying protocol, which supports features like multiplexing, header compression, and server push. This results in better performance and faster data transfer compared to HTTP/1.1.
4. **Code generation**: gRPC relies on code generation to create client and server stubs based on the specified protocol buffers. This enforces a strong contract between client and server, ensuring better type safety compared to manually written HTTP APIs.
5. **Error handling**: gRPC has a well-defined status and error handling mechanism, making it easier to distinguish between different types of errors. HTTP relies on status codes, which can be less descriptive and sometimes inconsistent across different APIs.
6. **Support for Load Balancing and Service Discovery**: gRPC has built-in support for load balancing and service discovery, making it easier to scale and manage services in distributed systems compared to HTTP.

In Summary, gRPC and HTTP differ in data serialization, streaming capabilities, underlying protocol, code generation, error handling, and support for load balancing and service discovery.