Protolizer Documentation

Introduction

Protolizer is a simple library to serialize and deserialize protobuf messages (JSON/dict ↔ protobuf). It does not require gRPC—only the protobuf package.

Installation

pip install protolizer

For running the project's tests and development tools:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Or using requirements files:

pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt

Usage for serialization

from protolizer import Serializer, fields

class AccountSerializer(Serializer):
    username = fields.CharField()
    balance = fields.IntField()

    class Meta:
        # schema must be your generated protobuf message class (e.g. from *_pb2 import Account)
        # Your .proto might look like:
        # message Account {
        #     string username = 1;
        #     int32 balance = 2;
        # }
        schema = Account

# Define an account in JSON and Protobuf format
protobuf_data = Account(username='John', balance=100)
json_data = {'username': 'John', 'balance': 100}

# Serialize the data to Protobuf format
protobuf_serializer = AccountSerializer(protobuf_data)
print(protobuf_serializer.protobuf)

# Serialize the data to JSON format
json_serializer = AccountSerializer(json_data)
print(json_serializer.data)

# Deserialize the data from Protobuf format to JSON format
protobuf_deserializer = AccountSerializer(protobuf_serializer.protobuf)
print(protobuf_deserializer.data)

# Deserialize the data from JSON format to Protobuf format
json_deserializer = AccountSerializer(json_serializer.data)
print(json_deserializer.protobuf)

If you want to see more examples, please check the examples directory.

Enum fields

from myapp_pb2 import Account, Status

class AccountSerializer(Serializer):
    username = fields.CharField()
    status = fields.EnumField(Status)

    class Meta:
        schema = Account

Partial updates

Pass partial=True to validate only the fields present in input (useful for PATCH-style updates):

serializer = AccountSerializer(data={"balance": 200}, partial=True)
serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)

Note: Meta.schema must be the generated protobuf message class (from your *_pb2 module). gRPC (grpcio) is only needed if you use gRPC services; for JSON ↔ protobuf conversion, the protobuf package alone is enough.

Supported fields

• CharField
• BytesField
• IntField
• FloatField
• BooleanField
• DateTimeField
• TimestampField
• EnumField
• DictField
• ListField
• CustomField (for custom responses)

Field options: read_only, write_only, required, allow_null.

Contribute

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

Security

See SECURITY.md to report vulnerabilities.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details

Author

This project is authored by @uwsgi on Telegram.