grpc.io/content/en/docs/languages/cpp/basics.md

---
title: Basics tutorial
description: A basic tutorial introduction to gRPC in C++.
weight: 50
---

This tutorial provides a basic C++ programmer's introduction to working with gRPC.

By walking through this example you'll learn how to:

- Define a service in a `.proto` file.
- Generate server and client code using the protocol buffer compiler.
- Use the C++ gRPC API to write a simple client and server for your service.

It assumes that you have read the [Introduction to gRPC](/docs/what-is-grpc/introduction/) and are familiar
with [protocol
buffers](https://protobuf.dev/overview). Note
that the example in this tutorial uses the proto3 version of the protocol
buffers language: you can find out more in
the [proto3 language
guide](https://protobuf.dev/programming-guides/proto3) and [C++
generated code
guide](https://protobuf.dev/reference/cpp/cpp-generated).

### Why use gRPC?

{{< why-grpc >}}

### Example code and setup

The example code is part of the `grpc` repo under [examples/cpp/route_guide][].
Get the example code and build gRPC:

 1. Follow the Quick start instructions to [build and locally install gRPC from
    source][].
 2. From the repo folder, change to the route guide example directory:

    ```sh
    cd examples/cpp/route_guide
    ```
 3. Run `cmake`

    ```sh
    mkdir -p cmake/build
    cd cmake/build
    cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$MY_INSTALL_DIR ../..
    ```

### Defining the service

Our first step (as you'll know from the [Introduction to gRPC](/docs/what-is-grpc/introduction/)) is to
define the gRPC *service* and the method *request* and *response* types using
[protocol buffers](https://protobuf.dev/overview).
You can see the complete `.proto` file in
[`examples/protos/route_guide.proto`](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/examples/protos/route_guide.proto).

To define a service, you specify a named `service` in your `.proto` file:

```protobuf
service RouteGuide {
   ...
}
```

Then you define `rpc` methods inside your service definition, specifying their
request and response types. gRPC lets you define four kinds of service method,
all of which are used in the `RouteGuide` service:

- A *simple RPC* where the client sends a request to the server using the stub
  and waits for a response to come back, just like a normal function call.

  ```protobuf
  // Obtains the feature at a given position.
  rpc GetFeature(Point) returns (Feature) {}
  ```

- A *server-side streaming RPC* where the client sends a request to the server
  and gets a stream to read a sequence of messages back. The client reads from
  the returned stream until there are no more messages. As you can see in our
  example, you specify a server-side streaming method by placing the `stream`
  keyword before the *response* type.

  ```protobuf
  // Obtains the Features available within the given Rectangle.  Results are
  // streamed rather than returned at once (e.g. in a response message with a
  // repeated field), as the rectangle may cover a large area and contain a
  // huge number of features.
  rpc ListFeatures(Rectangle) returns (stream Feature) {}
  ```

- A *client-side streaming RPC* where the client writes a sequence of messages
  and sends them to the server, again using a provided stream. Once the client
  has finished writing the messages, it waits for the server to read them all
  and return its response. You specify a client-side streaming method by placing
  the `stream` keyword before the *request* type.

  ```protobuf
  // Accepts a stream of Points on a route being traversed, returning a
  // RouteSummary when traversal is completed.
  rpc RecordRoute(stream Point) returns (RouteSummary) {}
  ```

- A *bidirectional streaming RPC* where both sides send a sequence of messages
  using a read-write stream. The two streams operate independently, so clients
  and servers can read and write in whatever order they like: for example, the
  server could wait to receive all the client messages before writing its
  responses, or it could alternately read a message then write a message, or
  some other combination of reads and writes. The order of messages in each
  stream is preserved. You specify this type of method by placing the `stream`
  keyword before both the request and the response.

  ```protobuf
  // Accepts a stream of RouteNotes sent while a route is being traversed,
  // while receiving other RouteNotes (e.g. from other users).
  rpc RouteChat(stream RouteNote) returns (stream RouteNote) {}
  ```

Our `.proto` file also contains protocol buffer message type definitions for all
the request and response types used in our service methods - for example, here's
the `Point` message type:

```protobuf
// Points are represented as latitude-longitude pairs in the E7 representation
// (degrees multiplied by 10**7 and rounded to the nearest integer).
// Latitudes should be in the range +/- 90 degrees and longitude should be in
// the range +/- 180 degrees (inclusive).
message Point {
  int32 latitude = 1;
  int32 longitude = 2;
}
```

### Generating client and server code

Next we need to generate the gRPC client and server interfaces from our `.proto`
service definition. We do this using the protocol buffer compiler `protoc` with
a special gRPC C++ plugin.

For simplicity, we've provided a [CMakeLists.txt](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/examples/cpp/route_guide/CMakeLists.txt)
that runs `protoc` for you with the appropriate plugin, input, and output (if
you want to run this yourself, make sure you've installed protoc and followed
the gRPC code [installation instructions](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/src/cpp/README.md#cmake) first):

```sh
make route_guide.grpc.pb.o
```

which actually runs:

```sh
protoc -I ../../protos --grpc_out=. --plugin=protoc-gen-grpc=`which grpc_cpp_plugin` ../../protos/route_guide.proto
protoc -I ../../protos --cpp_out=. ../../protos/route_guide.proto
```

Running this command generates the following files in your current directory:

- `route_guide.pb.h`, the header which declares your generated message classes
- `route_guide.pb.cc`, which contains the implementation of your message classes
- `route_guide.grpc.pb.h`, the header which declares your generated service
  classes
- `route_guide.grpc.pb.cc`, which contains the implementation of your service
  classes

These contain:

- All the protocol buffer code to populate, serialize, and retrieve our request
  and response message types
- A class called `RouteGuide` that contains

   - a remote interface type (or *stub*) for clients to call with the methods
     defined in the `RouteGuide` service.
   - two abstract interfaces for servers to implement, also with the methods
     defined in the `RouteGuide` service.


### Creating the server {#server}

First let's look at how we create a `RouteGuide` server. If you're only
interested in creating gRPC clients, you can skip this section and go straight
to [Creating the client](#client) (though you might find it interesting
anyway!).

There are two parts to making our `RouteGuide` service do its job:

- Implementing the service interface generated from our service definition:
  doing the actual "work" of our service.
- Running a gRPC server to listen for requests from clients and return the
  service responses.

You can find our example `RouteGuide` server in
[examples/cpp/route_guide/route_guide_server.cc](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/examples/cpp/route_guide/route_guide_server.cc).
Let's take a closer look at how it works.

#### Implementing RouteGuide

As you can see, our server has a `RouteGuideImpl` class that implements the
generated `RouteGuide::Service` interface:

```cpp
class RouteGuideImpl final : public RouteGuide::Service {
...
}
```

In this case we're implementing the *synchronous* version of `RouteGuide`, which
provides our default gRPC server behaviour. It's also possible to implement an
asynchronous interface, `RouteGuide::AsyncService`, which allows you to further
customize your server's threading behaviour, though we won't look at this in
this tutorial.

`RouteGuideImpl` implements all our service methods. Let's look at the simplest
type first, `GetFeature`, which just gets a `Point` from the client and returns
the corresponding feature information from its database in a `Feature`.

```cpp
Status GetFeature(ServerContext* context, const Point* point,
                  Feature* feature) override {
  feature->set_name(GetFeatureName(*point, feature_list_));
  feature->mutable_location()->CopyFrom(*point);
  return Status::OK;
}
```

The method is passed a context object for the RPC, the client's `Point` protocol
buffer request, and a `Feature` protocol buffer to fill in with the response
information. In the method we populate the `Feature` with the appropriate
information, and then `return` with an `OK` status to tell gRPC that we've
finished dealing with the RPC and that the `Feature` can be returned to the
client.

Note that all service methods can (and will!) be called from multiple threads at
the same time. You have to make sure that your method implementations are
thread safe. In our example, `feature_list_` is never changed after
construction, so it is safe by design. But if `feature_list_` would change during
the lifetime of the service, we would need to synchronize access to this member.

Now let's look at something a bit more complicated - a streaming RPC.
`ListFeatures` is a server-side streaming RPC, so we need to send back multiple
`Feature`s to our client.

```cpp
Status ListFeatures(ServerContext* context, const Rectangle* rectangle,
                    ServerWriter<Feature>* writer) override {
  auto lo = rectangle->lo();
  auto hi = rectangle->hi();
  long left = std::min(lo.longitude(), hi.longitude());
  long right = std::max(lo.longitude(), hi.longitude());
  long top = std::max(lo.latitude(), hi.latitude());
  long bottom = std::min(lo.latitude(), hi.latitude());
  for (const Feature& f : feature_list_) {
    if (f.location().longitude() >= left &&
        f.location().longitude() <= right &&
        f.location().latitude() >= bottom &&
        f.location().latitude() <= top) {
      writer->Write(f);
    }
  }
  return Status::OK;
}
```

As you can see, instead of getting simple request and response objects in our
method parameters, this time we get a request object (the `Rectangle` in which
our client wants to find `Feature`s) and a special `ServerWriter` object. In the
method, we populate as many `Feature` objects as we need to return, writing them
to the `ServerWriter` using its `Write()` method. Finally, as in our simple RPC,
we `return Status::OK` to tell gRPC that we've finished writing responses.

If you look at the client-side streaming method `RecordRoute` you'll see it's
quite similar, except this time we get a `ServerReader` instead of a request
object and a single response. We use the `ServerReader`s `Read()` method to
repeatedly read in our client's requests to a request object (in this case a
`Point`) until there are no more messages: the server needs to check the return
value of `Read()` after each call. If `true`, the stream is still good and it
can continue reading; if `false` the message stream has ended.

```cpp
while (stream->Read(&point)) {
  ...//process client input
}
```
Finally, let's look at our bidirectional streaming RPC `RouteChat()`.

```cpp
Status RouteChat(ServerContext* context,
                  ServerReaderWriter<RouteNote, RouteNote>* stream) override {
  RouteNote note;
  while (stream->Read(&note)) {
    std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(mu_);
    for (const RouteNote& n : received_notes_) {
      if (n.location().latitude() == note.location().latitude() &&
          n.location().longitude() == note.location().longitude()) {
        stream->Write(n);
      }
    }
    received_notes_.push_back(note);
  }

  return Status::OK;
}
```

This time we get a `ServerReaderWriter` that can be used to read *and* write
messages. The syntax for reading and writing here is exactly the same as for our
client-streaming and server-streaming methods. Although each side will always
get the other's messages in the order they were written, both the client and
server can read and write in any order — the streams operate completely
independently.

Note that since `received_notes_` is an instance variable and can be accessed by
multiple threads, we use a mutex lock here to guarantee exclusive access.

#### Starting the server

Once we've implemented all our methods, we also need to start up a gRPC server
so that clients can actually use our service. The following snippet shows how we
do this for our `RouteGuide` service:

```cpp
void RunServer(const std::string& db_path) {
  std::string server_address("0.0.0.0:50051");
  RouteGuideImpl service(db_path);

  ServerBuilder builder;
  builder.AddListeningPort(server_address, grpc::InsecureServerCredentials());
  builder.RegisterService(&service);
  std::unique_ptr<Server> server(builder.BuildAndStart());
  std::cout << "Server listening on " << server_address << std::endl;
  server->Wait();
}
```
As you can see, we build and start our server using a `ServerBuilder`. To do this, we:

1. Create an instance of our service implementation class `RouteGuideImpl`.
2. Create an instance of the factory `ServerBuilder` class.
3. Specify the address and port we want to use to listen for client requests
   using the builder's `AddListeningPort()` method.
4. Register our service implementation with the builder.
5. Call `BuildAndStart()` on the builder to create and start an RPC server for
   our service.
6. Call `Wait()` on the server to do a blocking wait until process is killed or
   `Shutdown()` is called.

### Creating the client {#client}

In this section, we'll look at creating a C++ client for our `RouteGuide`
service. You can see our complete example client code in
[examples/cpp/route_guide/route_guide_client.cc](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/examples/cpp/route_guide/route_guide_client.cc).

#### Creating a stub

To call service methods, we first need to create a *stub*.

First we need to create a gRPC *channel* for our stub, specifying the server
address and port we want to connect to - in our case we'll use no SSL:

```cpp
grpc::CreateChannel("localhost:50051", grpc::InsecureChannelCredentials());
```

{{% alert title="Note" color="info" %}}
In order to set additional options for the *channel*, use the `grpc::CreateCustomChannel()` api with any special channel arguments - `grpc::ChannelArguments`.
{{% /alert %}}

Now we can use the channel to create our stub using the `NewStub` method provided in the `RouteGuide` class we generated from our `.proto`.

```cpp
public:
 RouteGuideClient(std::shared_ptr<ChannelInterface> channel,
                  const std::string& db)
     : stub_(RouteGuide::NewStub(channel)) {
   ...
 }
```

#### Calling service methods

Now let's look at how we call our service methods. Note that in this tutorial
we're calling the *blocking/synchronous* versions of each method: this means
that the RPC call waits for the server to respond, and will either return a
response or raise an exception.

##### Simple RPC

Calling the simple RPC `GetFeature` is nearly as straightforward as calling a
local method.

```cpp
Point point;
Feature feature;
point = MakePoint(409146138, -746188906);
GetOneFeature(point, &feature);

...

bool GetOneFeature(const Point& point, Feature* feature) {
  ClientContext context;
  Status status = stub_->GetFeature(&context, point, feature);
  ...
}
```

As you can see, we create and populate a request protocol buffer object (in our
case `Point`), and create a response protocol buffer object for the server to
fill in. We also create a `ClientContext` object for our call - you can
optionally set RPC configuration values on this object, such as deadlines,
though for now we'll use the default settings. Note that you cannot reuse this
object between calls. Finally, we call the method on the stub, passing it the
context, request, and response. If the method returns `OK`, then we can read the
response information from the server from our response object.

```cpp
std::cout << "Found feature called " << feature->name()  << " at "
          << feature->location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
          << feature->location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
```

##### Streaming RPCs

Now let's look at our streaming methods. If you've already read [Creating the
server](#server) some of this may look very familiar - streaming RPCs are
implemented in a similar way on both sides. Here's where we call the server-side
streaming method `ListFeatures`, which returns a stream of geographical
`Feature`s:

```cpp
std::unique_ptr<ClientReader<Feature> > reader(
    stub_->ListFeatures(&context, rect));
while (reader->Read(&feature)) {
  std::cout << "Found feature called "
            << feature.name() << " at "
            << feature.location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
            << feature.location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
}
Status status = reader->Finish();
```

Instead of passing the method a context, request, and response, we pass it a
context and request and get a `ClientReader` object back. The client can use the
`ClientReader` to read the server's responses. We use the `ClientReader`s
`Read()` method to repeatedly read in the server's responses to a response
protocol buffer object (in this case a `Feature`) until there are no more
messages: the client needs to check the return value of `Read()` after each
call. If `true`, the stream is still good and it can continue reading; if
`false` the message stream has ended. Finally, we call `Finish()` on the stream
to complete the call and get our RPC status.

The client-side streaming method `RecordRoute` is similar, except there we pass
the method a context and response object and get back a `ClientWriter`.

```cpp
std::unique_ptr<ClientWriter<Point> > writer(
    stub_->RecordRoute(&context, &stats));
for (int i = 0; i < kPoints; i++) {
  const Feature& f = feature_list_[feature_distribution(generator)];
  std::cout << "Visiting point "
            << f.location().latitude()/kCoordFactor_ << ", "
            << f.location().longitude()/kCoordFactor_ << std::endl;
  if (!writer->Write(f.location())) {
    // Broken stream.
    break;
  }
  std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(
      delay_distribution(generator)));
}
writer->WritesDone();
Status status = writer->Finish();
if (status.IsOk()) {
  std::cout << "Finished trip with " << stats.point_count() << " points\n"
            << "Passed " << stats.feature_count() << " features\n"
            << "Travelled " << stats.distance() << " meters\n"
            << "It took " << stats.elapsed_time() << " seconds"
            << std::endl;
} else {
  std::cout << "RecordRoute rpc failed." << std::endl;
}
```

Once we've finished writing our client's requests to the stream using `Write()`,
we need to call `WritesDone()` on the stream to let gRPC know that we've
finished writing, then `Finish()` to complete the call and get our RPC status.
If the status is `OK`, our response object that we initially passed to
`RecordRoute()` will be populated with the server's response.

Finally, let's look at our bidirectional streaming RPC `RouteChat()`. In this
case, we just pass a context to the method and get back a `ClientReaderWriter`,
which we can use to both write and read messages.

```cpp
std::shared_ptr<ClientReaderWriter<RouteNote, RouteNote> > stream(
    stub_->RouteChat(&context));
```

The syntax for reading and writing here is exactly the same as for our
client-streaming and server-streaming methods. Although each side will always
get the other's messages in the order they were written, both the client and
server can read and write in any order — the streams operate completely
independently.

### Try it out!

Build the client and server:

```sh
make
```

Run the server:

```sh
./route_guide_server --db_path=path/to/route_guide_db.json
```

From a different terminal, run the client:

```sh
./route_guide_client --db_path=path/to/route_guide_db.json
```

[build and locally install gRPC from source]: {{< relref "quickstart#install-grpc" >}}
[examples/cpp/route_guide]: https://github.com/grpc/grpc/tree/{{< param grpc_vers.core >}}/examples/cpp/route_guide