Protobunny

Protobunny is the open-source evolution of AM-Flow's internal messaging library. While the original was purpose-built for RabbitMQ, this version has been completely re-engineered to provide a unified, type-safe interface for several message brokers, including Redis, NATS, and MQTT.

It simplifies messaging for asynchronous message handling by providing:

• A clean “message-first” API by using your protobuf definitions
• Message publishing/subscribing with typed topics
• Supports "task-like" queues (shared/competing consumers) vs. broadcast subscriptions
• Generate and consume Result messages (success/failure + optional return payload)
• Transparent messages serialization/deserialization
• Transparently serialize/deserialize custom "JSON-like" payload fields (numpy-friendly)
• Support async and sync contexts

Supported backends in the current version are:

• RabbitMQ
• Redis
• NATS
• Mosquitto
• Python "backend" with Queue/asyncio.Queue for local in-processing testing

Minimal requirements

• Python >= 3.10 <=3.13
• Core Dependencies: betterproto 2.0.0b7, grpcio-tools>=1.62.0
• Backend Drivers (Optional based on your usage):
  • NATS: nats-py (Requires NATS Server v2.10+ for full JetStream support).
  • Redis: redis (Requires Redis Server v6.2+ for Stream support).
  • RabbitMQ: aio-pika
  • Mosquitto: aiomqtt

Project scope

Protobunny is designed for teams who use messaging to coordinate work between microservices or different python processes and want:

• A small API surface, easy to learn and use, both async and sync
• Typed messaging with protobuf messages as payloads
• Supports various backends by simple configuration: RabbitMQ, Redis, Mosquitto, local in-process queues
• Consistent topic naming and routing
• Builtin task queue semantics and result messages
• Transparent handling of JSON-like payload fields as plain dictionaries/lists
• Optional validation of required fields
• Builtin logging service

Why Protobunny?

While there are many messaging libraries for Python, Protobunny is built specifically for teams that treat Protobuf as the single source of truth.

• Type-Safe by Design: Built natively for protobuf/betterproto.
• Semantic Routing: Zero-config infrastructure. Protobunny uses your Protobuf package structure to decide if a message should be broadcast (Pub/Sub) or queued (Producer/Consumer).
• Backend Agnostic: You can choose between RabbitMQ, Redis, NATS, and Mosquitto. Python for local testing.
• Sync & Async: Support for both asyncio and traditional synchronous workloads.
• Battle-Tested: Derived from internal libraries used in production systems at AM-Flow.

Feature Comparison with some existing libraries

Usage

See the Quick example on GitHub or on the docs site.

Documentation home page: https://am-flow.github.io/protobunny/.

Roadmap

• Core Support: Redis, RabbitMQ, Mosquitto.
• Semantic Patterns: Automatic tasks package routing.
• Arbistrary dictionary parsing: Transparently parse JSON-like fields as dictionaries/lists by using protobunny JsonContent type.
• Result workflow: Subscribe to results topics and receive protobunny Result messages produced by your callbacks.
• Cloud-Native: NATS (Core & JetStream) integration.
• Cloud Providers: AWS (SQS/SNS) and GCP Pub/Sub.
• OpenTelemetry Integration (Planned)
• More backends: Kafka support.
• gRPC Direct Call support

License

MIT Copyright (c) 2026 AM-Flow b.v.