gRPC on Google App Engine

[Mikael Hjalmarson]

Hi,

Is it possible to use gRPC to communicate between services in the App Engine Standard Environment? It seems like it was impossible in the java 7 runtime, but what about the new runtime? 

Best regards
Mikael

[Jordan (Cloud Platform Support)]

Currently App Engine does not support incoming gRPC connections (also listed here as a limitation for App Engine endpoints communications). The engineering team is aware of this and are working hard on providing a solution for gRPC use. 

In the meantime, outbound client support for gRPC is available, and can be seen in use by the Google Cloud Client Libraries. These official libraries are being developed to support outbound requests via gRPC to Google Cloud services from any client environment (including App Engine, e.g shown here for Java 8). 

[Mikael Hjalmarson]

How about internally? Like using gRPC to communicate between services? Or is the App Engine not able to handle http/2?

[Jordan (Cloud Platform Support)]

Correct, HTTP/2 requires a different routing infrastructure than App Engine Standard currently uses. As previously mentioned, the engineering team is working very hard on releasing a gRPC solution. You can follow this existing Public Issue Tracker for future updates and communications.