FastProto

Fast, Pythonic Protocol Buffers — messages are plain, readable @dataclass types, with all encoding and decoding handled by a compiled Rust core.

Google's Python protobuf generates opaque classes full of getters/setters and a reflection API you have to learn. FastProto instead generates clean dataclasses you can construct, compare, and repr() like any other — and does the wire work in Rust.

• Idiomatic messages — generated code is a @dataclass with plain annotations (str, int, list[...], dict[...], | None); autocomplete, type checkers, and repr() all just work.
• Rust wire codec — encode/decode run in Rust via PyO3, not pure Python.
• Wire-compatible — bytes interoperate both ways with Google's reference protobuf runtime.
• Standard toolchain — ships a protoc plugin; just add --fastproto_out.

Install

pip install fastproto            # runtime (Python 3.12+)
pip install "fastproto[plugin]"  # + the protoc code generator

Code generation also needs the protoc compiler itself — install it from your package manager (brew install protobuf, apt install protobuf-compiler) or the official releases.

Quick start

1. Define user.proto:

syntax = "proto3";
package example;

enum Role {
  ROLE_UNSPECIFIED = 0;
  ROLE_ADMIN = 1;
  ROLE_USER = 2;
}

message Address {
  string city = 1;
  string street = 2;
}

message User {
  int64 id = 1;
  string name = 2;
  optional string email = 3;
  Role role = 4;
  repeated string tags = 5;
  Address address = 6;
  map<string, int32> counters = 7;
}

2. Generate with protoc:

protoc --proto_path=. --fastproto_out=. user.proto

This writes user_pb.py — a plain, readable dataclass module:

# @generated by fastproto. DO NOT EDIT.
# source: user.proto
# pyright: reportUnknownVariableType=false
from dataclasses import dataclass, field
from enum import IntEnum

from fastproto import Message, Scalar, message


class Role(IntEnum):
    ROLE_UNSPECIFIED = 0
    ROLE_ADMIN = 1
    ROLE_USER = 2


_ADDRESS_DESCRIPTOR = bytes.fromhex("...")  # @generated (bytes elided)


@message(_ADDRESS_DESCRIPTOR)
@dataclass(slots=True)
class Address(Message):
    city: Scalar.String = ""
    street: Scalar.String = ""


_USER_DESCRIPTOR = bytes.fromhex("...")  # @generated (bytes elided)


@message(_USER_DESCRIPTOR)
@dataclass(slots=True)
class User(Message):
    id: Scalar.Int64 = 0
    name: Scalar.String = ""
    email: Scalar.String | None = None
    role: Role = Role(0)
    tags: list[Scalar.String] = field(default_factory=list)
    address: "Address | None" = None
    counters: dict[Scalar.String, Scalar.Int32] = field(default_factory=dict)

3. Use it like any dataclass:

from user_pb import Address, Role, User

user = User(
    id=42,
    name="Ada",
    role=Role.ROLE_ADMIN,
    tags=["vip", "beta"],
    address=Address(city="London", street="Baker St"),
    counters={"logins": 7},
)

data = user.to_bytes()               # serialize to protobuf wire bytes
assert User.from_bytes(data) == user  # and back

No SerializeToString() / ParseFromString() ceremony and no reflection — just to_bytes() / from_bytes() on a dataclass you can build, compare, and print.

Type mapping

Each proto scalar maps to an alias under fastproto.Scalar. An alias is just the underlying Python type (int, str, ...) tagged with Annotated[...], so it type-checks as the base type while still recording the exact wire type.

Composite fields: repeated T → list[T], map<K, V> → dict[K, V], enum → IntEnum, and optional / message / oneof fields → T | None.

Semantics

• Presence (proto3): plain scalars use their zero value and are not nullable; optional scalars, message fields, and oneof members are T | None and track explicit presence (a set empty string is distinct from unset). An all-default message encodes to b"".
• oneof: members are plain optional fields; setting more than one raises ValueError at encode time.
• Open enums (proto3): an enum value not defined in your schema decodes to a plain int (like google's runtime) and survives re-encoding.
• Unknown fields: fields your schema doesn't know are preserved verbatim across decode → encode (forward compatibility). They are invisible to __init__ / repr / ==.
• Nesting limit: messages deeper than 100 levels — or a cyclic object graph on encode — raise ValueError instead of exhausting the stack.
• References: sibling, self, and enum references resolve lazily on the first to_bytes() / from_bytes() — nothing for you to wire up.

empty = User()
assert empty.to_bytes() == b"" and empty.email is None
User(phone="1", telegram="a").to_bytes()  # ValueError: ... oneof ...

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, project layout, and the release flow.

License

MIT