Rest

Every public-facing API in the Composable Commerce Platform starts as a .proto file. The code — Go gRPC handlers, TypeScript SDK, HTTP routes, request validation, error codes — is generated from that contract. This article documents the conventions that make that system work. Answer-first: Internal services communicate via gRPC (type-safe, binary, ~7× faster than JSON over REST). External clients (browser, mobile app) use REST via the Gateway Service (port 8000). The proto file is the single source of truth for the API contract — and three proto conventions require special attention for engineers coming from Magento: the Money type (never use float for prices), cursor-based pagination (never use offset), and proto-level field validation (validation declared in the contract, not in business logic). ...

Prerequisite: This is Part 12 of the System Design Masterclass. Previous parts built the reliability patterns — this part covers comparing communication protocols and data formats for microservice communication. Answer-first: gRPC is optimized for internal microservices using binary Protobuf serialization over multiplexed HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 streams. REST uses standard JSON over HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2, serving as the default for public APIs. GraphQL operates as an aggregator at the API gateway or Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layer, allowing clients to query specific properties, but requires complexity limits and DataLoader batching to prevent server degradation. ...