Generates RPC server and client stubs for Go

This utility generates server and client RPC stubs from a Go interface. These stubs eliminate a large amount of the boilerplate code required for creating convenient, clean RPC interfaces.

Installing

The usual go command should install go-rpcgen:

$ go get github.com/alecthomas/go-rpcgen

Limitations

The source type must:

1. Be an interface (structs are not currently supported).
2. Name all of its return values.
3. Return an error as the last value in its return type.

Generating the stubs

If you had a file arith.go containing this interface:

package arith

type Arith interface {
  Add(a, b int) (result int, err error)
}

The following command will generate stubs for the interface:

go-rpcgen --source=arith.go --type=Arith

That will generate a file named arithrpc.go (by default) containing two types, ArithService and ArithClient, that can be used with the Go RPC system, and as a client for the system, respectively.

The generated code will look something like this:

package arith

import (
	"net/rpc"
)

type ArithService struct {
	impl Arith
}

func NewArithService(impl Arith) *ArithService {
	return &ArithService{impl}
}

type AddRequest struct {
	A, B int
}

type AddResponse struct {
	Result int
}

func (s *ArithService) Add(request *AddRequest, response *AddResponse) (err error) {
	response.Result, err = s.impl.Add(request.A, request.B)
	return
}

type ArithClient struct {
	client *rpc.Client
	service string
}

func NewArithClient(client *rpc.Client, service string) *ArithClient {
	return &ArithClient{client, service}
}

func (_c *ArithClient) Add(a, b int) (result int, err error) {
	request := &AddRequest{a, b}
	response := &AddResponse{}
	err = _c.client.Call(_c.service + ".Add", request, response)
	return response.Result, err
}