What is it

Source

Method developed by Google for serializing structured data

• often used for efficient and language-agnostic communication between different systems or for data storage
• method of transferring structured data across the wire and storing on the disk

// Has a language-agnostic binary format
syntax = "proto3"

message Person {
  string name = 1;
  int32 id = 2;
  string email = 3;
}

protoc

protoc is a compiler code provided by Google that converts any protobuff to target language compatible format

Anatomy

Schema definition is written in .proto files

message employee {
	int32 id = 1;
	string name = 2;
	float salary = 3;
}

• Defines a field within the message.
• It specifies that the field with data type, and it's named.
• The number (= 1) is the field's unique identifier.
• In Protocol Buffers, fields are numbered for identification and versioning.

Instantiation

const employee = new Schema.Employee();

employee.setId(1002);
employee.setName("Sam");
employee.setSalary(9000);

/* JSON equivalent */
const employees = [];

employees.push({
	"name": "Sam",
	"salary": 9000,
	"id": 1002,
});