protobuf example

A simple example of using protobuf in golang

Summary

If you are not using gRPC for server to server communications in your golang app, you are missing out on one of the best optimizations that you can make for the performance of the code and the development team.

1. It makes understanding the data model easier by strictly enforcing the proto 3 syntax. Json is easy to get started with and make a prototype, but protobuf will be more strict about syntax and standardize your communication between services.

2. Updating the schema for a gRPC request is simple, update the protobuf file and run code generation. Then it becomes like using any other package written in go to call your external service. No more boilerplate client code.

3. Protobuf marshaling is faster, uses less memory and produces a smaller payload than Json or xml Marshalling. This directly impacts infrastructure costs and will save money.

The time and cost savings you will see from using gRPC in your golang app is worth the time investment it will take to learn and implement it.

creating data structures using protobuf

write the protobuf file

syntax = "proto3";
package publish;
option go_package  = "/publish";

message Event {
  bytes content = 1;
  repeated string tags = 2;
}

message EventList {
  repeated Event events = 1;
}

This creates two structs, one is an event struct that contains content that is a byte array and tags that is a string array of strings There is also a struct for an array of events.

Now run the protoc command to generate the go code we will use in main.go

protoc --proto_path=. --go_out=. publish.proto

This creates the directory publish that contains the package publish with the go code that we can import to our main.go file.

Now we can import it using github.com/kfelter/protobuf-example/publish

There are other advantages to using protobuf that can be found in the protobuf documentation.

References:

install protoc https://grpc.io/docs/protoc-installation/

proto3 language guide https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/proto3#simple

protobuf golang tutorial https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/gotutorial