Skip to main content
Pre-release

This release is a pre-release and may not be stable for production use.

lightprotobuf

Introduction

lightprotobuf is a full Python 3 implementation of the Protocol Buffers as described by Google.

Documentation

The main class to use is lightprotobuf.Message

It must be the base class of every messages you define. The rest follows the .proto design:

This message:

enum FooEnum {
   FIELD = 5;
   FIELD2 = 6;
}

message FooMsg {
   required int32 foo_field = 1;
   optional FooEnum foo_enum = 2;
   enum BarEnum {
      FIELD = 5;
      BAR = 6;
   }
   required BarEnum bar_enum = 3;
   repeated string foo_rep = 4;
   repeated int32 foo_pak = 5 [packed=true];
}

message BarMsg {
   required FooMsg.BarEnum bar_enum = 1;
}

Is translated in python to:

from enum import IntEnum
from lightprotobuf import *
class FooEnum(IntEnum):
     FIELD = 5
     FIELD2 = 6

class FooMsg(Message):
     class BarEnum(IntEnum):
             FIELD = 5
             BAR = 6
     foo_field = Field(1, Int32, Field.REQUIRED, **{})
     bar_enum = Field(3, BarEnum, Field.REQUIRED, **{})
     foo_enum = Field(2, FooEnum, Field.OPTIONAL, **{})

class BarMsg(Message):
     bar_enum = Field(1, FooMsg.BarEnum, Field.REQUIRED, **{})

As you can see, the fields follow this template

<name> = Field(<tag number>, <type>, Field.<REQUIRED|OPTIONEL|REPEATED>, **{<options as a dict (optional)>}

Enums are python’s enum.IntEnum

Nested types are real python nested types referenced just like in .proto

API

The fields are actually transformed as attributes via descriptors. So you can access fields easily:

m = FooMsg()
m.foo_field = 5
m.foo_field # returns 5
m.foo_enum = 5 # Error because it expects a FooEnum object
m.foo_enum = FooEnum.FIELD # OK
m.bar_enum = FooMsg.BarEnum.BAR # OK

Repeated fields atc like a list:

m.foo_rep = ["a string", "another"] # OK
li = m.foo_rep # Get a reference to the list
li.append("a string") # OK, append the string
li.append(b'a bytes') # TypeError because there is a check to avoid mistakes

Note : packed fields are able to decode either data packed either multiple occurence of the field e.g. the test case:

class Repeated(Message):
        r = Field(1, Int32, Field.REPEATED, packed="True")
nb = [1,150,1,2,3,150]
b = io.BytesIO(b'\x0C\x08\x01\x08\x96\x01\x0A\x05\x01\x02\x03\x96\x01')
m = Repeated.from_stream(b)
self.assertEqual(list(m.r), nb)
# 0C (12) bytes following
# 08 = 1 << 3 | 0
# varints etc.
# 0A = 1 << 3 | 2
# 05 bytes following
# concatened varints etc.

To encode a message, lightprotobuf uses stream objects : each DataType has a to_stream and from_stream class method. Just to call it from a message to encode/decode a message:

import io
s = io.BytesIO()
Message.to_stream(s, m)
s.getvalue() # b'\x06\x08\x05\x10\x05\x18\x06'

m = FooMsg()
s = io.BytesIO(b'\x06\x08\x05\x10\x05\x18\x06')
m = Message.from_stream(s)

_Note_ : if required field is missing, it raises a FieldNotOptional exception

Release Notes

1.0.b3

  • WARNING : module moved at top-level. Use import lightprotobuf rather than from lightprotobuf import lightprotobuf

  • Add support for repeated fields, packed and not packed

1.0.b2

  • Remove DESCRIPTION.rst because duplicate of README.rst

Release files for lightprotobuf 1.0b5

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for lightprotobuf 1.0b5
File Size Uploaded
lightprotobuf-1.0b5.tar.gz 7.4 kB Details

Release files / lightprotobuf-1.0b5.tar.gz

Download URL lightprotobuf-1.0b5.tar.gz
Size 7.4 kB
Tags Source
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
cf15f097cb471b8b510ef3890bb32ae3a9bc18b777c091013b8b5822fd019a35
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
bd12043a8d2f33bca80173e08030059eb10fd189e2c08e2af5cfee3fa7469d03
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
No
Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page