Implementing bidirectional streaming with gRPC in .NET Aspire

You are not limited to only sending messages one at a time and in a one-way direction. You can implement a bidirectional streaming gRPC service. This will enable both the client and server to send streams of messages to each other independently within a single call. This is particularly useful for real-time applications where both parties need to continuously exchange data.

Getting ready

The starter project for this recipe can be found here: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/ASP.NET-9-Web-API-Cookbook/tree/main/end/chapter11/gRPCBidirectional.

How to do it…

1. Let’s modify the Protobuf file in both the BooksAPI and InventoryService projects to modify the MonitorStock method for bidirectional streaming. Let’s designate StockRequest as able to receive a stream and not just return a stream:

   service Inventory {
       rpc InitializeInventory (
        ...