Protocol connection

The protocol connection abstraction

A server, a client connection and a connection cache all manage protocol connections. A protocol connection is an abstraction that:

• holds a transport connection such as a QUIC connection or a tcp connection
• implements an RPC protocol layer over this transport connection

In C#, this abstraction is the IProtocolConnection interface:

namespace IceRpc;

public interface IProtocolConnection : IInvoker, IAsyncDisposable
{
    Task<(TransportConnectionInformation ConnectionInformation, Task ShutdownRequested)> ConnectAsync(
        CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);

    Task ShutdownAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken = default);
}

Even though it's public, a regular application should not use this API directly.

IceRPC provides two implementations of the protocol connection abstraction: ice and icerpc protocol connections.

Creating a protocol connection

In C#, you create a client protocol connection with a ClientProtocolConnectionFactory. For example:

var clientProtocolConnectionFactory = new ClientProtocolConnectionFactory(connectionOptions, logger: logger);
await using var protocolConnection = clientProtocolConnectionFactory.CreateConnection(serverAddress);

This allows you to implement your own custom version of ClientConnection or ConnectionCache.

There is currently no public API to create server protocol connections; as a result, you can't create your own custom version of Server.