lua-protobuf

A lua module to encode and decode protocol buffer messages

It is meant to be a special-purpose module and to be compiled into a separate module for each project and set of protocol buffer definitions.

package demo;

message Base {
  map<int64,double> items = 1;
  Nested nested = 2;
  bool istrue = 3;
}

message Nested {
  string text = 1;
  repeated int32 some = 2;
}

local protobuf = require('protobuf')
local input = {items = {[2] = 4.0}, nested = {text = 'hello!', some = {1, 2, 3}}, istrue = false}
local binary = protobuf.encode('demo.Base', input)
local output = protobuf.decode('demo.Base', binary)

Build

You need to have protoc installed.

git clone https://github.com/asciibeats/lua-protobuf.git
cd lua-protobuf
make

To use your own proto definitions, set the LUA_PROTOBUF_PATH variable.

LUA_PROTOBUF_PATH=path/to/protos make

To create a custom-named module, set the LUA_PROTOBUF_SUFFIX variable. This will result in a module called protobuf_suffix.so.

LUA_PROTOBUF_SUFFIX=myname make

To use enums by their values, instead of their names, set the following:

LUA_PROTOBUF_ENUM_AS_NUMBER=1 make

Demo

You need to have made lua-protobuf without providing any LUA_PROTOBUF_* variable.

lua demo.lua