/internal/website/docs/transport.md

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Transport

The transport layer is responsible for communication between services.

Features

• Pluggable transport implementations
• Secure and efficient communication

Implementations

Supported transports include:

• HTTP (default)
• NATS (go-micro.dev/v5/transport/nats)
• gRPC (go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc)
• Memory (go-micro.dev/v5/transport/memory)

Important: Transport vs Native gRPC

The gRPC transport uses gRPC as an underlying communication protocol, similar to how NATS or RabbitMQ might be used. It does not provide native gRPC compatibility with tools like grpcurl or standard gRPC clients generated by protoc.

If you need native gRPC compatibility (to use grpcurl, polyglot gRPC clients, etc.), you must use the gRPC server and client packages instead:

import (
    grpcServer "go-micro.dev/v5/server/grpc"
    grpcClient "go-micro.dev/v5/client/grpc"
)

// Important: Server must be specified before Name
service := micro.NewService(
    micro.Server(grpcServer.NewServer()),
    micro.Client(grpcClient.NewClient()),
    micro.Name("myservice"),
)

See Native gRPC Compatibility for a complete guide.

Plugins are scoped under go-micro.dev/v5/transport/<plugin>.

You can specify the transport when initializing your service or via env vars.

Example Usage

Here's how to use a custom transport (e.g., gRPC) in your Go Micro service:

package main

import (
    "go-micro.dev/v5"
    "go-micro.dev/v5/transport/grpc"
)

func main() {
    t := grpc.NewTransport()
    service := micro.NewService(
        micro.Transport(t),
    )
    service.Init()
    service.Run()
}

NATS transport:

import (
    "go-micro.dev/v5"
    tnats "go-micro.dev/v5/transport/nats"
)

func main() {
    t := tnats.NewTransport()
    service := micro.NewService(micro.Transport(t))
    service.Init()
    service.Run()
}

Configure via environment

MICRO_TRANSPORT=nats MICRO_TRANSPORT_ADDRESS=nats://127.0.0.1:4222 go run main.go

Common variables:

• MICRO_TRANSPORT: selects the transport implementation (http, nats, grpc, memory).
• MICRO_TRANSPORT_ADDRESS: comma-separated list of transport addresses.