This document presents an overview of all the endpoints a node exposes: gRPC, REST as well as some other endpoints. {synopsis}
## An Overview of All Endpoints
Each node exposes the following endpoints for users to interact with a node, each endpoint is served on a different port. Details on how to configure each endpoint is provided in the endpoint's own section.
- the gRPC server (default port: `9090`),
- the REST server (default port: `1317`),
- the Tendermint RPC endpoint (default port: `26657`).
::: tip
The node also exposes some other endpoints, such as the Tendermint P2P endpoint, or the [Prometheus endpoint](https://docs.tendermint.com/master/nodes/metrics.html#metrics), which are not directly related to the Cosmos SDK. Please refer to the [Tendermint documentation](https://docs.tendermint.com/master/tendermint-core/using-tendermint.html#configuration) for more information about these endpoints.
A patch introduced in `go-grpc v1.34.0` made gRPC incompatible with the `gogoproto` library, making some [gRPC queries](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/issues/8426) panic. As such, the SDK requires that `go-grpc <=v1.33.2` is installed in your `go.mod`.
To make sure that gRPC is working properly, it is **highly recommended** to add the following line in your application's `go.mod`:
Cosmos SDK v0.40 introduced Protobuf as the main [encoding](./encoding) library, and this brings a wide range of Protobuf-based tools that can be plugged into the SDK. One such tool is [gRPC](https://grpc.io), a modern open source high performance RPC framework that has decent client support in several languages.
Each module exposes [`Msg` and `Query` Protobuf services](../building-modules/messages-and-queries.md) to define state transitions and state queries. These services are hooked up to gRPC via the following function inside the application:
The `grpc.Server` is a concrete gRPC server, which spawns and serves any gRPC requests. This server can be configured inside `~/.simapp/config/app.toml`:
-`grpc.address = {string}` field defines the address (really, the port, since the host should be kept at `0.0.0.0`) the server should bind to. Defaults to `0.0.0.0:9090`.
Once the gRPC server is started, you can send requests to it using a gRPC client. Some examples are given in our [Interact with the Node](../run-node/interact-node.md#using-grpc) tutorial.
In Cosmos SDK v0.40, the node continues to serve a REST server. However, the existing routes present in version v0.39 and earlier are now marked as deprecated, and new routes have been added via gRPC-gateway.
-`api.address = {string}` field defines the address (really, the port, since the host should be kept at `0.0.0.0`) the server should bind to. Defaults to `tcp://0.0.0.0:1317`.
If, for various reasons, you cannot use gRPC (for example, you are building a web application, and browsers don't support HTTP2 on which gRPC is built), then the SDK offers REST routes via gRPC-gateway.
[gRPC-gateway](https://grpc-ecosystem.github.io/grpc-gateway/) is a tool to expose gRPC endpoints as REST endpoints. For each RPC endpoint defined in a Protobuf service, the SDK offers a REST equivalent. For instance, querying a balance could be done via the `/cosmos.bank.v1beta1.Query/AllBalances` gRPC endpoint, or alternatively via the gRPC-gateway `"/cosmos/bank/v1beta1/balances/{address}"` REST endpoint: both will return the same result. For each RPC method defined in a Protobuf service, the corresponding REST endpoint is defined as an option:
For application developers, gRPC-gateway REST routes needs to be wired up to the REST server, this is done by calling the `RegisterGRPCGatewayRoutes` function on the ModuleManager.
### Legacy REST API Routes
The REST routes present in Cosmos SDK v0.39 and earlier are marked as deprecated via a [HTTP deprecation header](https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-dalal-deprecation-header-01.html). They are still maintained to keep backwards compatibility, but will be removed in v0.41. For updating from Legacy REST routes to new gRPC-gateway REST routes, please refer to our [migration guide](../migrations/rest.md).
For application developers, Legacy REST API routes needs to be wired up to the REST server, this is done by calling the `RegisterRESTRoutes` function on the ModuleManager.
### Swagger
A [Swagger](https://swagger.io/) (or OpenAPIv2) specification file is exposed under the `/swagger` route on the API server. Swagger is an open specification describing the API endpoints a server serves, including description, input arguments, return types and much more about each endpoint.
For application developers, you may want to generate your own Swagger definitions based on your custom modules. The SDK's [Swagger generation script](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc4/scripts/protoc-swagger-gen.sh) is a good place to start.
Independently from the Cosmos SDK, Tendermint also exposes a RPC server. This RPC server can be configured by tuning parameters under the `rpc` table in the `~/.simapp/config/config.toml`, the default listening address is `tcp://0.0.0.0:26657`. An OpenAPI specification of all Tendermint RPC endpoints is available [here](https://docs.tendermint.com/master/rpc/).
Some Tendermint RPC endpoints are directly related to the Cosmos SDK:
-`/abci_query`: this endpoint will query the application for state. As the `path` parameter, you can send the following strings:
- any Protobuf fully-qualified service method, such as `/cosmos.bank.v1beta1.Query/AllBalances`. The `data` field should then include the method's request parameter(s) encoded as bytes using Protobuf.
-`/app/simulate`: this will simulate a transaction, and return some information such as gas used.
-`/app/version`: this will return the application's version.
-`/store/{path}`: this will query the store directly.
-`/p2p/filter/addr/{port}`: this will return a filtered list of the node's P2P peers by address port.
-`/p2p/filter/id/{id}`: this will return a filtered list of the node's P2P peers by ID.
-`/broadcast_tx_{aync,async,commit}`: these 3 endpoint will broadcast a transaction to other peers. CLI, gRPC and REST expose [a way to broadcast transations](./transactions.md#broadcasting-the-transaction), but they all use these 3 Tendermint RPCs under the hood.
| gRPC | - can use code-generated stubs in various languages<br>- supports streaming and bidirectional communication (HTTP2)<br>- small wire binary sizes, faster transmission | - based on HTTP2, not available in browsers<br>- learning curve (mostly due to Protobuf) |
| REST | - ubiquitous<br>- client libraries in all languages, faster implementation<br> | - only supports unary request-response communication (HTTP1.1)<br>- bigger over-the-wire message sizes (JSON) |
| Tendermint RPC | - easy to use | - bigger over-the-wire message sizes (JSON) |