This sample project shows one way that you can prepare the proto files so they can generate the data models, and so they can also describe the Telerik DataSourceRequest and DataSourceResult classes.

The key points are:

• The DataSourceRequest is serialized to JSON through the built-in System.Text.Json serializer that is the only supported serialization option out-of-the-box. It does not contain much data so it will not be a significant performance hit when sent to the server.

  • See the DataSourceProtoRequest class in the Shared project for the implementation. This is used to send the data when the service is called from the WASM app, and the service uses it to construct the actual object.

• The data service itself is in the Server project, see Services/TestDataService.cs. Both the server and the client projects reference the Shared project where the proto files, data models and additional code are, so they can be shared between the server and the client.

  • Review the code in the service for a sample implementation of grouping - since grouping changes the data from flat to nested hierarchical group descriptors, it requires some code that is also reflected in the proto file descriptors.

• The DataSourceResult is described in the Shared project - see the TestData folder. The code in the service needs the model type, however, and so the proto file needs to describe that as well. Thus, the proto file and the data service are not generic and you need to tweak them to each service and model you have.

• There is also a sample of using JSON in this project so you can compare the usage and related code againt the gRPC approach. See the TestGridJSON component (page) and the corresponding TestGridJSONController on the server. For more details, see here.

  • The front-end portions (the WASM project, the grid setup and the service there) are nearly identical, the additional steps for the gRPC service are mostly in the Shared project so that the necessary classes can be described and created, and in the Server project service where nested grouping needs to be configured.

The Telerik components cannot influence the serialization and deserialization process and transferring data between the endpoints is up to the application. Telerik supports serialization of the DataSourceRequest object to JSON through the native Blazor System.Text.Json serializer only. Sending and receiving the data to/from a gRPC service is beyond the scope of the Telerik components. Thus, such an integration is not supported by Telerik.

The data savings of gRPC vs JSON are usually around 30% in this sample and when you work with smaller page sizes (this sample uses 100, while 20-30 are more common values), the savings will be less pronounced. In a more common case you may want to reduce the page size of the grid to improve the ease of use and the UX (and also the client-side performance).

This sample does not implement Aggregates and their serialization back to the client.

This sample also adds a partial class to add data annotation attributes to allow validation. They cannot be created from the proto file and so a partial class with the same name is written in the app itself. If you choose such an approach, you must remember which fields to use in the backend and front-end, and tie them properly to the database.

This sample was created by Beat Ludi from Peacock Bros, and is posted in this repo as a sample learning resource with their explicit consent.