Preface

In today’s distributed world, a lot of us are interacting with APIs. Usually, these APIs are REST APIs, which accept and return JSON. There are, however, alternatives to the bulky and hard-to-process JSON data format. The main alternative is Protobuf. This book’s goal is to teach you this more efficient data format in both theory and practice. From learning how to write proto files to learning how to write your own protoc plugin, passing by learning the internals of Protobuf serialization/deserialization, you will learn everything you need to know to become a Protobuf expert.

Who this book is for

This book is for both beginners and those who think that they already know how to use Protobuf. One of the main problems with Protobuf is that it looks simple on the surface, but becoming an expert takes a lot of time. Fortunately, I have condensed all my knowledge into this book, so you do not have to dig it up all by yourself. So, if you are interested in the internals of serialization/deserialization, how to use Protobuf for both small and large projects, and how to build tools around it, this book is for you.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Serialization Primer, covers serialization and deserialization.

Chapter 2, Protobuf Is a Language, discusses Protobuf syntax.

Chapter 3, Describing Data with Protobuf Text Format, explains how and why to use Protobuf Text format.

Chapter 4, The Protobuf Compiler, discusses generating code and serializing/deserializing data with the compiler.

Chapter 5, Serialization Internals, explains every single part of the serialization/deserialization done by Protobuf.

Chapter 6, Schema Evolution over Time, covers how to evolve your Protobuf schema safely.

Chapter 7, Implementing an Address Book in Go, explains how to interact with generated code in Golang and build an address book.

Chapter 8, Implementing an Address Book in Python, explains how to interact with generated code in Python and build an address book.

Chapter 9, Developing a protoc Plugin in Go, shows you how to write a protoc plugin from scratch in Go.

Chapter 10, Advanced Build, covers the different ways to build your Protobuf projects.

To get the most out of this book

This book is in no way a Go or Python tutorial. You should be familiar with these languages before getting started. This will lower the mental load of having to learn both Protobuf and another programming language. I recommend you learn a bit of Go (see https://go.dev/learn/) since most of the code is in this language.

Software/hardware covered in the book	Operating system requirements
Python >= 3.10	Windows, macOS, or Linux
Go >= 1.21
Protoc >= 25.0

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Protocol-Buffers-Handbook. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “This should create a buf.yaml file in the proto directory.”

A block of code is set as follows:

syntax = "proto3";
message Encoding {
  int32 i32 = 1;
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

type Person_PhoneNumber_Type int32
const (
  Person_PhoneNumber_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED  Person_PhoneNumber_Type = 0
  Person_PhoneNumber_TYPE_MOBILE  Person_PhoneNumber_Type = 1
  Person_PhoneNumber_TYPE_HOME  Person_PhoneNumber_Type = 2
  Person_PhoneNumber_TYPE_WORK  Person_PhoneNumber_Type = 3
)

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ cat int32.txtpb | protoc --encode=Encoding encoding.proto | hexdump –C

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “The structure of the data is called the data format.”

Tips or important notes

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Get in touch

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