This document shows how to use gRPC Server Reflection in gRPC Python. Please see C++ Server Reflection Tutorial for general information and more examples how to use server reflection.
gRPC Python Server Reflection is an add-on library. To use it, first install the grpcio-reflection PyPI package into your project.
Note that with Python you need to manually register the service descriptors with the reflection service implementation when creating a server (this isn't necessary with e.g. C++ or Java)
# add the following import statement to use server reflection from grpc_reflection.v1alpha import reflection # ... def serve(): server = grpc.server(futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=10)) helloworld_pb2_grpc.add_GreeterServicer_to_server(Greeter(), server) # the reflection service will be aware of "Greeter" and "ServerReflection" services. SERVICE_NAMES = ( helloworld_pb2.DESCRIPTOR.services_by_name['Greeter'].full_name, reflection.SERVICE_NAME, ) reflection.enable_server_reflection(SERVICE_NAMES, server) server.add_insecure_port('[::]:50051') server.start()
Please see greeter_server_with_reflection.py in the examples directory for the full example, which extends the gRPC Python Greeter
example on a reflection-enabled server.
After starting the server, you can verify that the server reflection is working properly by using the grpc_cli
command line tool:
$ grpc_cli ls localhost:50051
output:
grpc.reflection.v1alpha.ServerReflection helloworld.Greeter
For more examples and instructions how to use the grpc_cli
tool, please refer to the grpc_cli
documentation and the C++ Server Reflection Tutorial.
The Server Reflection Protocol provides detailed information about how the server reflection works and describes the server reflection protocol in detail.