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 Cosmos SDK requires that `go-grpc <=v1.33.2` is installed in your `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 Cosmos 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 a [Protobuf `Query` service](../building-modules/messages-and-queries.md#queries) that defines state queries. The `Query` services and a transaction service used to broadcast transactions are hooked up to the gRPC server via the following function inside the application:
Note: It is not possible to expose any [Protobuf `Msg` service](../building-modules/messages-and-queries.md#messages) endpoints via gRPC. Transactions must be generated and signed using the CLI or programatically before they can be broadcasted using gRPC. See [Generating, Signing, and Broadcasting Transactions](../run-node/txs.html) for more information.
The `grpc.Server` is a concrete gRPC server, which spawns and serves all gRPC query requests and a broadcast transaction request. 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.
-`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 Cosmos 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 gRPC endpoint defined in a Protobuf `Query` service, the Cosmos SDK offers a REST equivalent. For instance, querying a balance could be done via the `/cosmos.bank.v1beta1.QueryAllBalances` 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 `Query` 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.
### 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 Cosmos 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/).
- any Protobuf fully-qualified service method, such as `/cosmos.bank.v1beta1.QueryAllBalances`. 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) |