Google Protocol Buffers: JavaScript Example

Question

Is it a good choice to use Google Protocol Buffers in JavaScript or is it better to do it with JSON?

Also it'd be great if someone can give me a simple example about Protocol Buffers implementation in JavaScript. The documentation on the Google's site is scarce.

This SO thread contains more information about the subject: stackoverflow.com/questions/7074147/… — alavrik
– alavrik, Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 15:21

rocky · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-22 07:25:17Z

82

[edit] Google's open source implementation of protocol buffers is available on GitHub

The official protobuf project support only Java, C++, and Python. Not JavaScript.

According to the Wiki of the project, there are three projects porting protocol buffers to JavaScript.

Protobuf.js: https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js
protobuf-js: http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-js/
protojs: http://github.com/sirikata/protojs

Protobuf.js is up to date. protobuf-js has not been updated for two years, so I would favor Protobuf.js.

The question still is "Why?": protobuf may be a bit smaller, especially when a lot of numeric values are transferred, but JSON is simply the more common protocol in the JS space and probably better supported and easier to integrate into other tools.

edited Sep 22, 2022 at 7:25

rocky

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answered Aug 3, 2011 at 15:37

dmeister

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13 Comments

Jan Segre Over a year ago

No doubt about JSON being more fit to most cases. However in my case the message sender is not under my control, and it serializes to protobuf messages, thus we need to parse the messages from javascript.

Paweł Szczur Over a year ago

@Why: Because you write a message and service methods as proto and you get skeleton of the code for free? Serialization and deserialization on both client/server side.

Sprague Over a year ago

Why: the same reason to use protobuf in any other situation. Don't forget that browsers now have WebSocket. Also, desktop applications can be written in JS for Windows 8, and applications, including servers, in Node.

Jordan Over a year ago

Code Climate has a great writeup on the benefits of protobuf over JSON

Zero Trick Pony Over a year ago

If your system's API already has other binary/protobuf clients, such as Android or iOS devices, then it's more natural to use the existing proto API for a Javascript web client than to build a second copy of the API that offers JSON, just to support a web page.

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AlikElzin-kilaka · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-31 08:42:52Z

44

Update (28/7/2016): Release 3.0.0 was published - supporting Javascript and other languages as well - in addition to some other features.

Google have recently added alpha support for JS to protobufs: https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/tag/v3.0.0-beta-2

Usage:

protoc -I=$SRC_DIR --js_out=$DST_DIR $SRC_DIR/addressbook.proto

Screenshots from the release documentation:

edited Jul 31, 2016 at 8:42

answered Jan 12, 2016 at 7:22

AlikElzin-kilaka

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1 Comment

Zeeshan Ajmal Over a year ago

While running above command, I am getting "Missing input file" error.

Ondrej Burkert · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-29 20:21:38Z

6

Protobuf 3.0.0 is out: https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/tag/v3.0.0

And it support JavaScript natively. The basic information is in the announcement.

We are going to look into it soon.

answered Jul 29, 2016 at 20:21

Ondrej Burkert

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Comments

EdgarK · Accepted Answer · 2023-09-25 21:40:17Z

2

2023 Update. The JS implementation had been introduces and branched out of the main protoc app. Now you can install it using

npm i grpc-tools

Then use node node_modules/grpc-tools/bin/protoc.js the arguments are the same as for usual protoc. For example:

node node_modules/grpc-tools/bin/protoc.js --js_out=import_style=commonjs,binary:./dst --proto_path=./proto/ simple.proto

To use it with the usual require also install

npm i google-protobuf

Then you can simply require the resulting generated file and use it.

answered Sep 25, 2023 at 21:40

EdgarK

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2 Comments

Ariel Marcelo Pardo Over a year ago

but grpc-tools is for GRPC, i think...

EdgarK Over a year ago

GRPC is using Protocol Buffers under the hood. Likely there is some overhead but it works.

John Slegers · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-22 16:55:22Z

-1

Try Protostuff!

I had a bit of hard time configuring but I'm sure that was more of my issue. You can serialize/deserialize a protobuff/protostuff message to/from JSON. I'm at the early stages of using this but it looks promising so far.

edited Jan 22, 2016 at 16:55

John Slegers

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answered Dec 19, 2012 at 20:07

JeffSpicoli

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6 Comments

Pimin Konstantin Kefaloukos Over a year ago

Curious. Why was this voted down (I have no opinion about Protostuff)?

Marc Gravell Over a year ago

@Pimin probably because protostuff is Java and the question is JavaScript?

holms Over a year ago

@PiminKonstantinKefaloukos person is searching protobuf implementation on javascript

Fuzzy Analysis Over a year ago

Building Javascript objects for GWT using Protostuff: code.google.com/p/protostuff/wiki/GwtJsonOverlays . Totally on topic.

Chris Moschini Over a year ago

@fuzzyanalysis Fair although I would then call this answer incomplete rather than simply wrong. Since you can't expect every visitor to know how to compile Java to JS or to even know GWT exists, you'd expect at least a pointer to GWT or ideally a working example of getting it working in GWT - since that could be quite the adventure.

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