Python no-codegen API

[Riccardo Fiorista]

Hi there!

Excited to be part of the gRPC community.

I've recently posted a feature request to the 

However, I'm actually facing some issues atm and am wondering if I'm on a completely wrong track here.

We're currently trying to move our python code-base to the experimental no-codegen API using the commodity function:

```

grpc.protos_and_services(protobuf_path)

``` 

There's also a very basic example of the usage (here in the python examples)[https://github.com/grpc/grpc/tree/master/examples/python/no_codegen]. 

However, we're currently facing the issues that protobuf files importing other protobuf files require special treatment which we addressed like this:

```

# load.py

import shutil

import grpc

import os

def get_protos_and_services(service):

    file_paths = _import_proto_file(service)

    pb2, pb2_grpc = grpc.protos_and_services(file_paths[0])

    # need to do it this way as tempfile doesn't work

    for f in file_paths:

        os.remove(f)

    return pb2, pb2_grpc

def _import_proto_file(service):

    """

    Recursively imports all necessary protofiles

    """

    file_paths = [f"{service}.proto"]

    with open(file_paths[0], 'w+b') as f:

        shutil.copy2(_get_absolute_protobuf_file_path(service), f.name)

        for line in f:

            l = line.decode('utf-8')

            if 'import "' in l:

                service_to_import = l.replace(' ', '').lstrip('import"').split('.')[0]

                file_paths.extend(_import_proto_file(service_to_import))

    return file_paths

def _get_absolute_protobuf_file_path(service):

    return os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) + f'/{service}.proto'

```

While this is far from elegant, it works. 

Now, there's another protobuf file that has an import from the official google standard protobuf lib:

```

import "google/protobuf/timestamp.proto";

```

This case is not covered from the code above and we're currently struggling to find a solution of how to import it using the no-codegen API.

Anyone an idea what we could do here?

Cheers,

Riccardo

[Amit Saha]

I couldn't find any resource online talking about no_codegen - (if you
have any handy, that would be great). However, perhaps you could clone
the repository https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/ and then
read the
directory tree/master/src/google/protobuf looking for the imports?


>
> Cheers,
> Riccardo
>
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[Richard Belleville]

Responded in [the corresponding Github issue](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/26571#issuecomment-875763020).