Protocol Guides

Bowire ships with fourteen first-party protocol plugins plus seven sibling plugins (AMQP, Kafka, TacticalAPI, Akka.NET, DIS, UDP, Surgewave) that live in their own NuGet packages and install via bowire plugin install. Each implements IBowireProtocol and auto-registers at startup. Install only the ones you need.

First-party protocols

Protocol	Package	Discovery	Call types
gRPC	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Grpc`	Server Reflection · `.proto` upload	Unary, Server / Client / Bidi streaming
REST	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Rest`	OpenAPI 3 / Swagger 2 · `IApiDescriptionGroupCollectionProvider`	Request / response
GraphQL	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.GraphQL`	Schema introspection · SDL upload	Query, Mutation, Subscription
SignalR	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.SignalR`	Endpoint metadata scan	Invoke, Server streaming, Duplex
WebSocket	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.WebSocket`	Manual (no inherent discovery)	Duplex with text / binary frames
SSE	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Sse`	Attribute · manual registration	Server streaming
MQTT	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Mqtt`	Topic subscribe / publish (MQTT 3.1.1, 5.0 via MQTTnet)	Pub / Sub, Request / Response
NATS	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Nats`	Subject sampling · JetStream streams · Services API (`$SRV.PING`)	Pub / Sub / Request, Stream consume
SOAP	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Soap`	WSDL 1.1 `<portType>` + `<binding>` walk	Unary (SOAP 1.1 / 1.2)
JSON-RPC	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.JsonRpc`	OpenRPC `rpc.discover` · freeform fallback	Unary
Pulsar	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Pulsar`	Pulsar HTTP admin (`/admin/v2/persistent`)	Produce (Unary), Subscribe (ServerStreaming)
Socket.IO	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.SocketIo`	Manual (namespace / event)	Duplex with ack
OData	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.OData`	CSDL metadata endpoint	Request / response
MCP	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Mcp`	Wraps other protocols as MCP tools	Unary (tool invocation)

Sibling plugins

These ship from their own repos / NuGet packages on independent release cadences. Install via the CLI:

Protocol	Package	Discovery	Call types
AMQP	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Amqp`	RabbitMQ Management HTTP API (0.9.1) · synthetic `Broker` service (1.0)	Publish (Unary), Consume (ServerStreaming)
Kafka	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Kafka`	`IAdminClient.GetMetadata`	Consume (ServerStreaming), Produce (Unary)
TacticalAPI	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.TacticalApi`	Bundled `.proto` set (no Server Reflection required)	Typed CRUD (Unary) + server-streaming subscribe
Akka.NET	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Akka`	DI-resolved `ActorSystem` (embedded only)	Mailbox tap (server-streaming `Tap/MonitorMessages`)
DIS	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Dis`	Live UDP-multicast probe · entity-scoped streams · mock replay	Per-entity PDU stream, exercise-wide stream
UDP	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Udp`	URL-bind any UDP endpoint	Datagram listener (multicast / broadcast / unicast)
Surgewave (pre-release)	`Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Protocol.Surgewave`	Cluster service · pending native admin API	Consume (ServerStreaming), Produce (Unary)

Writing your own: see Custom protocols.

Architecture at a glance

graph LR
    A[Bowire Core] --> B[gRPC]
    A --> C[REST]
    A --> D[GraphQL]
    A --> E[SignalR]
    A --> F[WebSocket]
    A --> G[SSE]
    A --> H[MQTT]
    A --> NATS[NATS]
    A --> SOAP[SOAP]
    A --> JRPC[JSON-RPC]
    A --> PULSAR[Pulsar]
    A --> I[Socket.IO]
    A --> J[OData]
    A --> K[MCP]
    A --> M[Surgewave]
    A --> N[Kafka]
    A --> O[DIS]
    A --> P[UDP]
    A --> Q["Akka.NET"]
    A --> AMQP[AMQP]
    A --> R[TacticalAPI]
    A --> L[Custom plugins]
    style A fill:#6366f1,color:#fff
    style L stroke-dasharray: 5 5
    style R stroke-dasharray: 3 3

What every plugin provides

Discovery — enumerate services / methods / topics / events from the target
Invocation — send a request and return the response (or the stream)
Streaming / channels — where the protocol supports it, yield messages as they arrive

The UI stays protocol-agnostic: the same sidebar, request editor, and response viewer renders every plugin's output. Protocol-specific details (e.g. gRPC metadata, SignalR hub methods, MQTT topic wildcards) show up as extra fields in the request form only when the active plugin declares them.

Multiple protocols in one session

Every installed plugin runs simultaneously. A single Bowire instance against a service that speaks gRPC, REST, and SignalR shows all three in the sidebar with per-protocol badges. Filter to a single protocol via the command palette or the sidebar protocol pills.

Public test endpoints

If you want to try Bowire against a real-world service before standing up your own host, each protocol guide ends with a "Try it with a public endpoint" section listing well-known, anonymously-callable endpoints you can pass straight to --url:

REST → Try it with a public endpoint — Swagger Petstore (OpenAPI 3 & Swagger 2), JSONPlaceholder, DummyJSON, ReqRes, httpbin
GraphQL → Try it with a public endpoint — Countries, Rick & Morty, Star Wars (SWAPI)

These are third-party services that may rate-limit or disappear without notice. The per-protocol Bowire.Samples/ projects are the canonical try-it path for sustained testing.

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