Comparisons

It can sometimes be difficult to understand how a new tool fits in your existing toolchain. How is it used with another framework? Does it replace other libraries? What is the difference between them? Let’s look through some popular tools today so that we can better understand what Prim+RPC is and how it can be used.

This page is not comprehensive and aims only to provide a high-level overview.

GraphQL

GraphQL is a form of RPC with its own querying language and types. It is a specification implemented in many programming languages and frameworks. It defines several operations to interact with data: queries to retrieve data, mutations to change data, and subscriptions to react to events on the server.

Prim+RPC is an RPC library that uses JavaScript as the query language. It does not define operations, instead data is retrieved by calling a defined function. Since it takes advantage of JavaScript as a language, the server and client are expected to be JavaScript however RPC requests are simple to make from other languages.

As a high-level overview, here is a summary of notable differences:

tRPC

tRPC is an RPC library for JavaScript/TypeScript using many concepts from GraphQL but taking advantage of validation frameworks like Zod to both validate queries and mutations and also to provide static type safety. While backend implementations can be changed, it is typically used with HTTP servers and has several adapters available. The client generally sends HTTP requests but this can be changed with a custom “terminating link.”

Prim+RPC is also an RPC library for JavaScript but does not compare itself with GraphQL but rather with JavaScript. Queries and mutations in tRPC are just function calls. Subscriptions are simply callbacks on functions. It’s also runtime and framework agnostic: it works over HTTP but also over WebSocket, Web Workers, or any other transport through plugins. Prim+RPC also provides type safety through TypeScript but leaves validation to the developer in the defined functions.

Both libraries have features such as custom serialization, batching support, ability to “subscribe” to server updates, ability to pass server context to RPC library, among other features. A summary of notable differences:

Data Loaders

Data loaders is a concept that’s become popular with fullstack frameworks like Qwik, Next.js, Remix, and others. It is auto-generated RPC, created as part of a compile step, allowing server-side code to be written inside of and extracted from client-side code. This is generally used to transform data only available on the server into a format expected by UI components on the client but could potentially be used to create a client-specific API.

Prim+RPC auto-generates RPC as well but requests are inferred at runtime, without a compilation step. Server-side code is intended to be written separately from client-side code, by design. Since RPC is not extracted from code, there is no auto-generation of function names or routes: they are given by the name of your functions. There is also less risk of accidentally exposing server-side code to the client since client and server are separate and only types are shared.

As for how they may fit together: Prim+RPC is intended to write a full server API while data loaders are commonly used to transform data from a server’s API into a format expected by the client.

gRPC

gRPC is a form of RPC based around Protocol Buffers (“protobufs”) designed to work with many languages by creating a schema and implementing that schema with the server of your choice and connecting to the server with a compiled client which can be used in various programming languages. It provides many transport options such as unary, server-side, client-side, and bidirectional streaming, and has options for authentication.

Prim+RPC on the other hand is intended for JavaScript and does not utilize a schema language. It instead infers information from the module provided to Prim+RPC. It also does not require a compiled client since the client will simply intercept calls and turn that into RPC. In terms of transport, Prim+RPC supports options comparable to unary and server-side streaming. Authentication is not provided with Prim+RPC but can be implemented by handing server context to Prim+RPC.

JSON RPC

JSON RPC is an RPC specification based on JSON. It is a lightweight protocol and implementations vary widely. There are many implementations available in many languages but the underlying specification is fairly simple. It allows methods to be called and results received as either a result or an error. It also includes an option for batching requests. Many implementations support these basic features and may add additional features.

Prim+RPC supports all of JSON RPC’s features and many more. While the underlying RPC structures appear similar, Prim+RPC is not based on JSON RPC and covers features that don’t have equivalents in JSON RPC like callback support and file uploads. It has one implementation and it is both runtime and framework agnostic.

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