protocol-buffers-schema

What is protocol-buffers-schema?

The protocol-buffers-schema npm package is a tool for parsing .proto files, which define Protocol Buffers schemas. Protocol Buffers is a method of serializing structured data, and this package allows you to parse the schema definitions into a usable JSON format programmatically in JavaScript.

What are protocol-buffers-schema's main functionalities?

Parsing .proto files

This feature allows you to parse .proto files to get a JSON representation of the Protocol Buffers schema. The code sample demonstrates how to read a .proto file from the filesystem and parse it using the package.

const fs = require('fs');
const Schema = require('protocol-buffers-schema');

const schema = Schema.parse(fs.readFileSync('example.proto'));
console.log(JSON.stringify(schema, null, 2));

Other packages similar to protocol-buffers-schema

protobufjs

protobufjs is a more comprehensive package that not only allows you to parse .proto files but also to serialize and deserialize data according to the Protocol Buffers schema. It provides a full suite of tools for working with Protocol Buffers in JavaScript.

pbf

pbf is a minimalistic library for reading and writing Protocol Buffers data. It is designed to be very fast and efficient, but it does not provide a schema parser like protocol-buffers-schema. Instead, it focuses on the encoding and decoding aspects.

README

protocol-buffers-schema

No nonsense protocol buffers schema parser written in Javascript

npm install protocol-buffers-schema

Usage

First save the following file as example.proto

message Point {
  required int32 x = 1;
  required int32 y=2;
  optional string label = 3;
}

message Line {
  required Point start = 1;
  required Point end = 2;
  optional string label = 3;
}

The run the following example

var fs = require('fs')
var schema = require('protocol-buffers-schema')

// pass a buffer or string to schema.parse
var sch = schema.parse(fs.readFileSync('example.proto'))

// will print out the schema as a javascript object
console.log(sch)

Running the above example will print something like

{
  package: null,
  enums: [],
  messages: [{
    name: 'Point',
    enums: [],
    messages: [],
    fields: [{
      name: 'x',
      type: 'int32',
      tag: 1,
      required: true,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }, {
      name: 'y',
      type: 'int32',
      tag: 2,
      required: true,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }, {
      name: 'label',
      type: 'string',
      tag: 3,
      required: false,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }]
  }, {
    name: 'Line',
    enums: [],
    messages: [],
    fields: [{
      name: 'start',
      type: 'Point',
      tag: 1,
      required: true,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }, {
      name: 'end',
      type: 'Point',
      tag: 2,
      required: true,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }, {
      name: 'label',
      type: 'string',
      tag: 3,
      required: false,
      repeated: false,
      options: {}
    }]
  }],
  options:{}
}

API

schema.parse(protobufSchemaBufferOrString)

Parses a .proto schema into a javascript object

schema.stringify(schema)

Stringifies a parsed schema back into .proto format

License

MIT