@bufbuild/protobuf

What is @bufbuild/protobuf?

@bufbuild/protobuf is an npm package that provides tools for working with Protocol Buffers (protobufs) in JavaScript and TypeScript. It allows you to define, serialize, and deserialize structured data efficiently.

What are @bufbuild/protobuf's main functionalities?

Define Protobuf Messages

This feature allows you to define protobuf messages using JavaScript classes. The `@Field.d` decorator is used to specify the field number and type.

const { Message, Field } = require('@bufbuild/protobuf');

class Person extends Message {
  @Field.d(1, 'string')
  name = '';

  @Field.d(2, 'int32')
  age = 0;
}

const person = new Person({ name: 'John Doe', age: 30 });
console.log(person);

Serialize Protobuf Messages

This feature allows you to serialize a protobuf message into a binary format. The `encode` method is used to convert the message into a buffer.

const { Message, Field } = require('@bufbuild/protobuf');

class Person extends Message {
  @Field.d(1, 'string')
  name = '';

  @Field.d(2, 'int32')
  age = 0;
}

const person = new Person({ name: 'John Doe', age: 30 });
const buffer = Person.encode(person).finish();
console.log(buffer);

Deserialize Protobuf Messages

This feature allows you to deserialize a binary buffer back into a protobuf message. The `decode` method is used to convert the buffer back into a message object.

const { Message, Field } = require('@bufbuild/protobuf');

class Person extends Message {
  @Field.d(1, 'string')
  name = '';

  @Field.d(2, 'int32')
  age = 0;
}

const buffer = new Uint8Array([10, 8, 74, 111, 104, 110, 32, 68, 111, 101, 16, 30]);
const person = Person.decode(buffer);
console.log(person);

Other packages similar to @bufbuild/protobuf

protobufjs

protobufjs is a popular library for working with Protocol Buffers in JavaScript. It provides similar functionalities to @bufbuild/protobuf, such as defining, serializing, and deserializing protobuf messages. However, protobufjs has been around longer and has a larger user base.

google-protobuf

google-protobuf is the official Protocol Buffers library for JavaScript provided by Google. It offers core functionalities for working with protobufs, including message definition, serialization, and deserialization. Compared to @bufbuild/protobuf, google-protobuf is more closely aligned with Google's protobuf ecosystem.

README

@bufbuild/protobuf

A complete implementation of protocol buffers in TypeScript, suitable for web browsers and Node.js.

Features

• small code size
• no dependencies
• implements all proto3 features, including the canonical JSON format
• implements all proto2 features, except for extensions and the text format
• passes the protocol buffers conformance tests
• provides all well-known types with their specialized JSON representation
• uses and algebraic data type to represent oneof groups
• unboxes fields using google/protobuf/wrappers.proto to optional primitives
• represents 64-bit integers with BigInt, and falls back to string if unavailable
• uses standard TypeScript enums for protocol buffer enum
• provides equals() and clone() on each message for convenience
• fields are plain properties, and support the object spread operator
• messages can be constructed from partial plain objects
• can dynamically create types at run time, for example from a set of google.protobuf.FileDescriptorProto
• provides field information to traverse types programmatically

Copyright

The code to encode and decode varint is Copyright 2008 Google Inc., licensed under BSD-3-Clause.