grapec

Declare plain Python classes, call gRPC and thrift services with them.

import grapec


@grapec.struct(package="connectrpc.eliza.v1")
class SayRequest:
    sentence: str


@grapec.struct(package="connectrpc.eliza.v1")
class SayResponse:
    sentence: str


class ElizaService(grapec.Client, package="connectrpc.eliza.v1"):
    @grapec.name("Say")
    def say(self, request: SayRequest) -> SayResponse: ...


eliza = ElizaService("grpcs://demo.connectrpc.com")
reply = eliza.say(SayRequest(sentence="I feel tired today"))
print(reply.sentence)

That talks to the public ELIZA demo at demo.connectrpc.com, paste it into a file and run it.

The type hints are the schema. @grapec.struct turns a class into a keyword only dataclass that encodes and decodes itself with the protobuf wire format or the thrift binary protocol, and grapec.Client subclasses call methods on a standard gRPC or thrift server. There are no .proto or .thrift files to write and no generated code to check in. The only dependency is h2.

Pronounced /ɡreɪ.peɪk/, like "gray-pay-k".

Install

Requires Python 3.12+.

pip install grapec
# or
uv add grapec

Example

import enum
from datetime import datetime

import grapec


class Priority(enum.IntEnum):
    UNSPECIFIED = 0
    LOW = 1
    HIGH = 2


@grapec.struct(package="example.hello.v1")
class Tag:
    key: str
    value: str


@grapec.struct(package="example.hello.v1")
class HelloRequest:
    name: str
    priority: Priority = Priority.LOW
    tags: list[Tag]                  # repeated Tag
    sent_at: datetime | None         # optional google.protobuf.Timestamp


@grapec.struct(package="example.hello.v1")
class HelloReply:
    message: str


class Greeter(grapec.Client, package="example.hello.v1"):
    @grapec.name("SayHello")
    def say_hello(self, request: HelloRequest) -> HelloReply: ...


greeter = Greeter("grpc://localhost:50051", timeout=5)
reply = greeter.say_hello(HelloRequest(name="grapec", tags=[Tag(key="lang", value="python")]))

data = bytes(reply)                          # protobuf wire format
HelloReply.from_bytes(data)
reply.to_json()                              # proto3 JSON mapping
print(grapec.export_proto(Greeter))          # the .proto for the other side

Field numbers follow declaration order, Annotated[int, grapec.Id(7)] pins one. The URL scheme picks the transport, grpc://, grpcs://, thrift:// or thrifts://. Connections are pooled per client, calls accept timeout=, metadata= and compression=. For asyncio, subclass grapec.AsyncClient and declare the methods with async def.

The same structs work with thrift. Methods may take several parameters, return scalars and declare the exceptions they throw:

from typing import Annotated

import grapec


@grapec.struct(package="store")
class NotFound(Exception):
    key: str


@grapec.struct(package="store")
class Item:
    key: str
    count: Annotated[int, grapec.I32]


class Store(grapec.Client, package="store"):
    @grapec.raises(NotFound)
    def get(self, key: str) -> Item: ...

    def put(self, item: Item) -> None: ...


store = Store("thrift://localhost:9090")
try:
    item = store.get("answer")
except NotFound as exc:
    print("no such key", exc.key)

More

• docs/reference.md covers struct rules, type mapping, sessions and pooling, dict and JSON views, .proto export and the thrift details.
• examples/eliza.py and examples/grpcbin.py call public gRPC services, no setup needed. examples/grpc and examples/thrift run a local grpcio or thriftpy2 server and walk through every feature.

Current scope is struct serialization and unary calls. Streaming is not implemented yet.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest

Serialization is tested against the protobuf and thriftpy2 implementations, the clients against real grpcio and thrift servers.