ProtocolBuffers

gRPC

• Google Remote Procedural Call
• In gRPC, a client application can directly call a method on a server application on a different machine as if it were a local object
• makes it easier for you to create distributed applications and services

Protocol Buffers

• it is a free and open-source, cross-platform data format
• used to serialize structured data in a forward-compatible and backward-compatible way
• its like JSON, except it's smaller and faster, and it generates native language bindings

Protocol buffers are a combination of

• the definition language (.proto files)
• code that protoc (proto compiler) generates to interface with data
• language-specific runtime libraries
• serialization format for data

Why Protocol Buffers?

• it provides serialization format for packets of typed, structured data that are up to a few megabytes in size
• this format is suitable for both ephemeral networks as well as long-term storage
• Advantages
  • Compact data storage
  • Fast parsing
  • Availability in many programming languages
  • Optimized functionality through auto-generated classes

Workflow

flowchart

id1[Create .proto file to define data structure]

f1[/.proto files/]

id2[Generate code using the protoc compiler]

f2[/.java, .py, .cc or other source files/]

id3[Compile PB code with your project code]

f3[/Compiled classes/]

id4[Use PB classes to serialize, share, and deserialize data]

id1 --> f1
f1 -->|Input| id2
id2 -->|Output| f2
f2 -->|Input| id3
id3 -->|Output| f3
f3 -->|Input| id4

Loading

Syntax

Language Guide proto3

Example project

Checkout ./example directory: Protobuf example