protobuf: copy input data before decoding

CodedInputStream is risk averse in ways that hurt performance when
parsing large messages.  gRPC knows how large the input size is as it
is being read from the wire, and only tries to parse it once the entire
message has been read in.  The message is represented as chunks of
memory strung together in a CompositeReadableBuffer, and then wrapped
in a custom BufferInputStream.

When passed to Protobuf, CodedInputStream attempts to read data out
of this InputStream into CIS's internal 4K buffer.  For messages that
are much larger, CIS copies from the input in chunks of 4K and saved in
an ArrayList.  Once the entire message size is read in, it is re-copied
into one large byte array and passed back up.  This only happens for
ByteStrings and ByteBuffers that are read out of CIS.  (See
CIS.readRawBytesSlowPath for implementation).

gRPC doesn't need this overhead, since we already have the entire
message in memory, albeit in chunks.  This change copies the composite
buffer into a single heap byte buffer, and passes this (via
UnsafeByteOperations) into CodedInputStream.  This pays one copy to
build the heap buffer, but avoids the two copes in CIS.  This also
ensures that the buffer is considered "immutable" from CIS's point of
view.

Because CIS does not have ByteString aliasing turned on, this large
buffer will not accidentally be kept in memory even if only tiny fields
from the proto are still referenced.  Instead, reading ByteStrings out
of CIS will always copy.  (This copy, and the problems it avoids, can
be turned off by calling CIS.enableAliasing.)

Benchmark results will come shortly, but initial testing shows
significant speedup in throughput tests.  Profiling has shown that
copying memory was a large time consumer for messages of size 1MB.
2 files changed
tree: 62ec8a6d086e43ef21c7ceb35ea5f6560364129a
  1. all/
  2. android-interop-testing/
  3. auth/
  4. benchmarks/
  5. buildscripts/
  6. compiler/
  7. core/
  8. examples/
  9. gradle/
  10. grpclb/
  11. interop-testing/
  12. netty/
  13. okhttp/
  14. protobuf/
  15. protobuf-lite/
  16. protobuf-nano/
  17. services/
  18. stub/
  19. testing/
  20. thrift/
  21. .gitattributes
  22. .gitignore
  23. .travis.yml
  24. build.gradle
  25. CHANGES.md
  26. checkstyle.license
  27. checkstyle.xml
  28. codecov.yml
  29. COMPILING.md
  30. CONTRIBUTING.md
  31. gradlew
  32. gradlew.bat
  33. LICENSE
  34. NOTICE.txt
  35. PATENTS
  36. README.md
  37. RELEASING.md
  38. run-test-client.sh
  39. run-test-server.sh
  40. SECURITY.md
  41. settings.gradle
README.md

gRPC-Java - An RPC library and framework

gRPC-Java works with JDK 6. TLS usage typically requires using Java 8, or Play Services Dynamic Security Provider on Android. Please see the Security Readme.

Build Status Coverage Status

Download

Download the JARs. Or for Maven with non-Android, add to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.grpc</groupId>
  <artifactId>grpc-netty</artifactId>
  <version>0.15.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>io.grpc</groupId>
  <artifactId>grpc-protobuf</artifactId>
  <version>0.15.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>io.grpc</groupId>
  <artifactId>grpc-stub</artifactId>
  <version>0.15.0</version>
</dependency>

Or for Gradle with non-Android, add to your dependencies:

compile 'io.grpc:grpc-netty:0.15.0'
compile 'io.grpc:grpc-protobuf:0.15.0'
compile 'io.grpc:grpc-stub:0.15.0'

For Android client, use grpc-okhttp instead of grpc-netty and grpc-protobuf-lite or grpc-protobuf-nano instead of grpc-protobuf:

compile 'io.grpc:grpc-okhttp:0.15.0'
compile 'io.grpc:grpc-protobuf-lite:0.15.0'
compile 'io.grpc:grpc-stub:0.15.0'

Development snapshots are available in Sonatypes's snapshot repository.

For protobuf-based codegen, you can put your proto files in the src/main/proto and src/test/proto directories along with an appropriate plugin.

For protobuf-based codegen integrated with the Maven build system, you can use protobuf-maven-plugin:

<build>
  <extensions>
    <extension>
      <groupId>kr.motd.maven</groupId>
      <artifactId>os-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>1.4.1.Final</version>
    </extension>
  </extensions>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.xolstice.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>protobuf-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>0.5.0</version>
      <configuration>
        <!--
          The version of protoc must match protobuf-java. If you don't depend on
          protobuf-java directly, you will be transitively depending on the
          protobuf-java version that grpc depends on.
        -->
        <protocArtifact>com.google.protobuf:protoc:3.0.0-beta-3:exe:${os.detected.classifier}</protocArtifact>
        <pluginId>grpc-java</pluginId>
        <pluginArtifact>io.grpc:protoc-gen-grpc-java:0.15.0:exe:${os.detected.classifier}</pluginArtifact>
      </configuration>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <goals>
            <goal>compile</goal>
            <goal>compile-custom</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

For protobuf-based codegen integrated with the Gradle build system, you can use protobuf-gradle-plugin:

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'com.google.protobuf'

buildscript {
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
  }
  dependencies {
    // ASSUMES GRADLE 2.12 OR HIGHER. Use plugin version 0.7.5 with earlier
    // gradle versions
    classpath 'com.google.protobuf:protobuf-gradle-plugin:0.7.7'
  }
}

protobuf {
  protoc {
    // The version of protoc must match protobuf-java. If you don't depend on
    // protobuf-java directly, you will be transitively depending on the
    // protobuf-java version that grpc depends on.
    artifact = "com.google.protobuf:protoc:3.0.0-beta-3"
  }
  plugins {
    grpc {
      artifact = 'io.grpc:protoc-gen-grpc-java:0.15.0'
    }
  }
  generateProtoTasks {
    all()*.plugins {
      grpc {}
    }
  }
}

How to Build

If you are making changes to gRPC-Java, see the compiling instructions.

Navigating Around the Source

Here's a quick readers' guide to the code to help folks get started. At a high level there are three distinct layers to the library: Stub, Channel & Transport.

Stub

The Stub layer is what is exposed to most developers and provides type-safe bindings to whatever datamodel/IDL/interface you are adapting. gRPC comes with a plugin to the protocol-buffers compiler that generates Stub interfaces out of .proto files, but bindings to other datamodel/IDL should be trivial to add and are welcome.

Key Interfaces

Stream Observer

Channel

The Channel layer is an abstraction over Transport handling that is suitable for interception/decoration and exposes more behavior to the application than the Stub layer. It is intended to be easy for application frameworks to use this layer to address cross-cutting concerns such as logging, monitoring, auth etc. Flow-control is also exposed at this layer to allow more sophisticated applications to interact with it directly.

Common

Client

Server

Transport

The Transport layer does the heavy lifting of putting and taking bytes off the wire. The interfaces to it are abstract just enough to allow plugging in of different implementations. Transports are modeled as Stream factories. The variation in interface between a server Stream and a client Stream exists to codify their differing semantics for cancellation and error reporting.

Note the transport layer API is considered internal to gRPC and has weaker API guarantees than the core API under package io.grpc.

gRPC comes with three Transport implementations:

  1. The Netty-based transport is the main transport implementation based on Netty. It is for both the client and the server.
  2. The OkHttp-based transport is a lightweight transport based on OkHttp. It is mainly for use on Android and is for client only.
  3. The inProcess transport is for when a server is in the same process as the client. It is useful for testing.

Common

Client

Server

Examples

Tests showing how these layers are composed to execute calls using protobuf messages can be found here https://github.com/google/grpc-java/tree/master/interop-testing/src/main/java/io/grpc/testing/integration