Cannot import google's proto with #grpc/proto-loader - node.js

Question

I have the following proto:
syntax = "proto3";
import "google/rpc/status.proto";
message Response {
google.rpc.Status status = 1;
}
message Request {
Type name = 1;
}
service Service {
rpc SomeMethod (Request) returns (Response);
}
And I am writing a client in node:
const path = require('path');
const grpc = require('grpc');
const protoLoader = require('#grpc/proto-loader');
const protoFiles = require('google-proto-files');
const PROTO_PATH = path.join(__dirname, '/proto/myproto.proto');
const packageDefinition = protoLoader.loadSync(
PROTO_PATH,
{
keepCase: true,
longs: String,
enums: String,
defaults: true,
oneofs: true,
includeDirs: [protoFiles('rpc')],
},
);
const proto = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(packageDefinition);
const client = new proto.Service('localhost:1111', grpc.credentials.createInsecure());
When I run the client, I get the following error: TypeError: proto.Service is not a constructor. I found it's related to the import of status.proto. What is the right way of importing google protos using proto-loader? The server is in Java.

Answer 1

Olga, you cannot use the absolute path in the PROTO_PATH if you are using includeDirs. Apparently you need to put both path, i.e. path to myproto.proto AND path to the google-proto-files into includeDirs and use just file name as PROTO_PATH then it works just fine. See here:
https://github.com/grpc/grpc-node/issues/470
Here is modified code that works. Please note that I also had to replace "Type" with "int32" in the myproto.proto.
const path = require('path');
const grpc = require('grpc');
const protoLoader = require('#grpc/proto-loader');
const protoFiles = require('google-proto-files');
const PROTO_PATH = 'myproto.proto';
const packageDefinition = protoLoader.loadSync(
PROTO_PATH,
{
keepCase: true,
longs: String,
enums: String,
defaults: true,
oneofs: true,
includeDirs: ['node_modules/google-proto-files', 'proto']
},
);
const protoDescriptor = grpc.loadPackageDefinition(packageDefinition);
const client = new protoDescriptor.Service('localhost:1111', grpc.credentials.createInsecure());
Hope it helps. :)

Answer 2

The problem here is that the path that protoFiles('rpc') returns doesn't work with the import line in your .proto file. That import line means that #grpc/proto-loader is looking for an include directory that contains google/rpc/status.proto, but protoFiles('rpc') returns a directory that directly contains status.proto. So, you have to change one or both of those things so that the relative directories match up properly.