Microservices Architecture - Part 2: Service Discovery & Communication

Building on our foundation, we’ll now implement service discovery and establish robust communication patterns between services.

Service Discovery

Service discovery allows services to find and communicate with each other dynamically.

Consul Integration Example

// Service Registration
func registerService(client *api.Client, serviceName string, port int) error {
    registration := &api.AgentServiceRegistration{
        ID:      serviceName + "-1",
        Name:    serviceName,
        Port:    port,
        Address: "localhost",
        Check: &api.AgentServiceCheck{
            HTTP:     fmt.Sprintf("http://localhost:%d/health", port),
            Interval: "10s",
            Timeout:  "5s",
        },
    }
    return client.Agent().ServiceRegister(registration)
}

Inter-Service Communication

gRPC for High-Performance Communication

syntax = "proto3";

service OrderService {
    rpc CreateOrder(OrderRequest) returns (OrderResponse);
    rpc GetOrder(GetOrderRequest) returns (OrderResponse);
}

message OrderRequest {
    string customer_id = 1;
    repeated OrderItem items = 2;
}

Load Balancing

Strategies for distributing traffic across multiple service instances:

• Round-robin
• Least connections
• Random selection
• Health-aware routing

Next Steps

Part 3 will cover API Gateway implementation and request routing.