grpc-ndbc

README

NDBC gRPC Service

A Go-based gRPC service that provides programmatic access to National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) text data files. This service parses and serves structured data from NDBC's text files available at https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/.

Features

• Access to NDBC station data from standardized text files
• Supported data types:
  • Standard meteorological data
  • Detailed wave data
  • Prediction data
  • Historical data
• Automatic parsing of NDBC's fixed-width text format
• Structured data responses using Protocol Buffers
• Built with Go and modern cloud-native practices

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21 or higher
• Protocol Buffers compiler (protoc)
• Go gRPC tools (go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@latest)
• Docker (optional, for containerized deployment)

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/liambardong/grpc-ndbc
cd grpc-ndbc

# Install dependencies
go mod download

# Generate Protocol Buffer code
make generate

Usage

Starting the Server

go run cmd/server/main.go

The server will start on port 50051 by default.

Example Client Usage

package main

import (
    "context"
    "log"
    pb "github.com/liambardong/grpc-ndbc/"
    "google.golang.org/grpc"
)

func main() {
    conn, err := grpc.Dial("localhost:50051", grpc.WithInsecure())
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Failed to connect: %v", err)
    }
    defer conn.Close()
    
    log.Printf("Station data: %v", response)
}

Data Types and Endpoints

The service supports the following NDBC text data types:

API Reference

Service Methods

• StationList() returns (StationListResponse)

See api/proto/v1 for detailed message definitions.

Configuration

The service can be configured using environment variables:

Docker Support

To Be Created

Error Handling

The service handles common error cases:

• Invalid station IDs
• Missing or malformed text files
• Network connectivity issues with NDBC servers
• Malformed data in text files

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) for providing open access to their data
• NDBC data is available at https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/
• gRPC team for the excellent framework
• Go team for the amazing language and tools