Language Guide (proto 2)

This guide describes how to use the protocol buffer language to structure your protocol buffer data, including .proto file syntax and how to generate data access classes from your .proto files. It covers the proto2 version of the protocol buffers language: for information on proto3 syntax, see the Proto3 Language Guide.

This is a reference guide – for a step by step example that uses many of the features described in this document, see the tutorial for your chosen language.

Defining A Message Type

First let’s look at a very simple example. Let’s say you want to define a search request message format, where each search request has a query string, the particular page of results you are interested in, and a number of results per page. Here’s the .proto file you use to define the message type.

syntax = "proto2";

message SearchRequest {
  optional string query = 1;
  optional int32 page_number = 2;
  optional int32 result_per_page = 3;
}

• The first line of the file specifies that you’re using proto2 syntax. This should be the first non-empty, non-comment line of the file.
• The SearchRequest message definition specifies three fields (name/value pairs), one for each piece of data that you want to include in this type of message. Each field has a name and a type.

Specifying Field Types

In the above example, all the fields are scalar types: two integers (page_number and result_per_page) and a string (query). You can also specify enumerations and composite types like other message types for your field.

Assigning Field Numbers

You must give each field in your message definition a number between 1 and 536,870,911 with the following restrictions:

• The given number must be unique among all fields for that message.
• Field numbers 19,000 to 19,999 are reserved for the Protocol Buffers implementation. The protocol buffer compiler will complain if you use one of these reserved field numbers in your message.
• You cannot use any previously reserved field numbers or any field numbers that have been allocated to extensions.

This number cannot be changed once your message type is in use because it identifies the field in the message wire format. “Changing” a field number is equivalent to deleting that field and creating a new field with the same type but a new number. See Deleting Fields for how to do this properly.

Field numbers should never be reused. Never take a field number out of the reserved list for reuse with a new field definition. See Consequences of Reusing Field Numbers.

You should use the field numbers 1 through 15 for the most-frequently-set fields. Lower field number values take less space in the wire format. For example, field numbers in the range 1 through 15 take one byte to encode. Field numbers in the range 16 through 2047 take two bytes. You can find out more about this in Protocol Buffer Encoding.

Consequences of Reusing Field Numbers

Reusing a field number makes decoding wire-format messages ambiguous.

The protobuf wire format is lean and doesn’t provide a way to detect fields encoded using one definition and decoded using another.

Encoding a field using one definition and then decoding that same field with a different definition can lead to:

• Developer time lost to debugging
• A parse/merge error (best case scenario)
• Leaked PII/SPII
• Data corruption

Common causes of field number reuse:

• renumbering fields (sometimes done to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing number order for fields). Renumbering effectively deletes and re-adds all the fields involved in the renumbering, resulting in incompatible wire-format changes.
• deleting a field and not reserving the number to prevent future reuse. This has been a very easy mistake to make with extension fields for several reasons.

The max field is 29 bits instead of the more-typical 32 bits because three lower bits are used for the wire format. For more on this, see the Encoding topic.

Specifying Field Rules

Message fields can be one of the following:

• optional: a well-formed message can have zero or one of this field (but not more than one).
• repeated: this field can be repeated any number of times (including zero) in a well-formed message. The order of the repeated values will be preserved.
• required: Do not use. Required fields are so problematic they were removed from proto3. Semantics for required field should be implemented at the application layer. When it is used, a well-formed message must have exactly one of this field.

For historical reasons, repeated fields of scalar numeric types (for example, int32, int64, enum) aren’t encoded as efficiently as they could be. New code should use the special option [packed = true] to get a more efficient encoding. For example:

repeated int32 samples = 4 [packed = true];
repeated ProtoEnum results = 5 [packed = true];

You can find out more about packed encoding in Protocol Buffer Encoding.

A second issue with required fields appears when someone adds a value to an enum. In this case, the unrecognized enum value is treated as if it were missing, which also causes the required value check to fail.

Well-formed Messages

The term “well-formed,” when applied to protobuf messages, refers to the bytes serialized/deserialized. The protoc parser validates that a given proto definition file is parseable.

In the case of optional fields that have more than one value, the protoc parser will accept the input, but only uses the last field. So, the “bytes” may not be “well-formed” but the resulting message would have only one and would be “well-formed” (but would not roundtrip the same).

Adding More Message Types

Multiple message types can be defined in a single .proto file. This is useful if you are defining multiple related messages – so, for example, if you wanted to define the reply message format that corresponds to your SearchResponse message type, you could add it to the same .proto:

message SearchRequest {
  optional string query = 1;
  optional int32 page_number = 2;
  optional int32 result_per_page = 3;
}

message SearchResponse {
 ...
}

Combining Messages leads to bloat While multiple message types (such as message, enum, and service) can be defined in a single .proto file, it can also lead to dependency bloat when large numbers of messages with varying dependencies are defined in a single file. It’s recommended to include as few message types per .proto file as possible.

Adding Comments

To add comments to your .proto files, use C/C++-style // and /* ... */ syntax.

/* SearchRequest represents a search query, with pagination options to
 * indicate which results to include in the response. */

message SearchRequest {
  optional string query = 1;
  optional int32 page_number = 2;  // Which page number do we want?
  optional int32 result_per_page = 3;  // Number of results to return per page.
}

Deleting Fields

Deleting fields can cause serious problems if not done properly.

Do not delete required fields. This is almost impossible to do safely.

When you no longer need a non-required field and all references have been deleted from client code, you may delete the field definition from the message. However, you must reserve the deleted field number. If you do not reserve the field number, it is possible for a developer to reuse that number in the future.

You should also reserve the field name to allow JSON and TextFormat encodings of your message to continue to parse.

Reserved Fields

If you update a message type by entirely deleting a field, or commenting it out, future developers can reuse the field number when making their own updates to the type. This can cause severe issues, as described in Consequences of Reusing Field Numbers.

To make sure this doesn’t happen, add your deleted field number to the reserved list. To make sure JSON and TextFormat instances of your message can still be parsed, also add the deleted field name to a reserved list.

The protocol buffer compiler will complain if any future developers try to use these reserved field numbers or names.

message Foo {
  reserved 2, 15, 9 to 11;
  reserved "foo", "bar";
}

Reserved field number ranges are inclusive (9 to 11 is the same as 9, 10, 11). Note that you can’t mix field names and field numbers in the same reserved statement.

What’s Generated From Your .proto?

When you run the protocol buffer compiler on a .proto, the compiler generates the code in your chosen language you’ll need to work with the message types you’ve described in the file, including getting and setting field values, serializing your messages to an output stream, and parsing your messages from an input stream.

• For C++, the compiler generates a .h and .cc file from each .proto, with a class for each message type described in your file.
• For Java, the compiler generates a .java file with a class for each message type, as well as a special Builder class for creating message class instances.
• Python is a little different – the Python compiler generates a module with a static descriptor of each message type in your .proto, which is then used with a metaclass to create the necessary Python data access class at runtime.
• For Go, the compiler generates a .pb.go file with a type for each message type in your file.

You can find out more about using the APIs for each language by following the tutorial for your chosen language. For even more API details, see the relevant API reference.

Scalar Value Types

A scalar message field can have one of the following types – the table shows the type specified in the .proto file, and the corresponding type in the automatically generated class:

You can find out more about how these types are encoded when you serialize your message in Protocol Buffer Encoding.

^[1] In Java, unsigned 32-bit and 64-bit integers are represented using their signed counterparts, with the top bit simply being stored in the sign bit.

^[2] In all cases, setting values to a field will perform type checking to make sure it is valid.

^[3] 64-bit or unsigned 32-bit integers are always represented as long when decoded, but can be an int if an int is given when setting the field. In all cases, the value must fit in the type represented when set. See [2].

Optional Fields And Default Values

As mentioned above, elements in a message description can be labeled optional. A well-formed message may or may not contain an optional element. When a message is parsed, if it does not contain an optional element, accessing the corresponding field in the parsed object returns the default value for that field. The default value can be specified as part of the message description. For example, let’s say you want to provide a default value of 10 for a SearchRequest’s result_per_page value.

optional int32 result_per_page = 3 [default = 10];

If the default value is not specified for an optional element, a type-specific default value is used instead: for strings, the default value is the empty string. For bytes, the default value is the empty byte string. For bools, the default value is false. For numeric types, the default value is zero. For enums, the default value is the first value listed in the enum’s type definition. This means care must be taken when adding a value to the beginning of an enum value list. See the Updating A Message Type section for guidelines on how to safely change definitions.

Enumerations

When you’re defining a message type, you might want one of its fields to only have one of a pre-defined list of values. For example, let’s say you want to add a corpus field for each SearchRequest, where the corpus can be UNIVERSAL, WEB, IMAGES, LOCAL, NEWS, PRODUCTS or VIDEO. You can do this very simply by adding an enum to your message definition - a field with an enum type can only have one of a specified set of constants as its value (if you try to provide a different value, the parser will treat it like an unknown field). In the following example we’ve added an enum called Corpus with all the possible values, and a field of type Corpus:

enum Corpus {
  CORPUS_UNSPECIFIED = 0;
  CORPUS_UNIVERSAL = 1;
  CORPUS_WEB = 2;
  CORPUS_IMAGES = 3;
  CORPUS_LOCAL = 4;
  CORPUS_NEWS = 5;
  CORPUS_PRODUCTS = 6;
  CORPUS_VIDEO = 7;
}

message SearchRequest {
  optional string query = 1;
  optional int32 page_number = 2;
  optional int32 result_per_page = 3 [default = 10];
  optional Corpus corpus = 4 [default = CORPUS_UNIVERSAL];
}

You can define aliases by assigning the same value to different enum constants. To do this you need to set the allow_alias option to true. Otherwise, the protocol buffer compiler generates a warning message when aliases are found. Though all alias values are valid during deserialization, the first value is always used when serializing.

enum EnumAllowingAlias {
  option allow_alias = true;
  EAA_UNSPECIFIED = 0;
  EAA_UNKNOWN = 1;
  EAA_STARTED = 1;
  EAA_RUNNING = 2;
}
enum EnumNotAllowingAlias {
  ENAA_UNSPECIFIED = 0;
  ENAA_STARTED = 1;
  // ENAA_RUNNING = 1;  // Uncommenting this line will cause a warning message.
  ENAA_FINISHED = 2;
}

Enumerator constants must be in the range of a 32-bit integer. Since enum values use varint encoding on the wire, negative values are inefficient and thus not recommended. You can define enums within a message definition or outside – these enums can be reused in any message definition in your .proto file. You can also use an enum type declared in one message as the type of a field in a different message, using the syntax _MessageType_._EnumType_.

When you run the protocol buffer compiler on a .proto that uses an enum, the generated code will have a corresponding enum for Java or C++, or a special EnumDescriptor class for Python that’s used to create a set of symbolic constants with integer values in the runtime-generated class.

For more information about how to work with message enums in your applications, see the generated code guide for your chosen language.

Reserved Values

If you update an enum type by entirely removing an enum entry, or commenting it out, future users can reuse the numeric value when making their own updates to the type. This can cause severe issues if they later load old versions of the same .proto, including data corruption, privacy bugs, and so on. One way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to specify that the numeric values (and/or names, which can also cause issues for JSON serialization) of your deleted entries are reserved. The protocol buffer compiler will complain if any future users try to use these identifiers. You can specify that your reserved numeric value range goes up to the maximum possible value using the max keyword.

enum Foo {
  reserved 2, 15, 9 to 11, 40 to max;
  reserved "FOO", "BAR";
}

Note that you can’t mix field names and numeric values in the same reserved statement.

Using Other Message Types

You can use other message types as field types. For example, let’s say you wanted to include Result messages in each SearchResponse message – to do this, you can define a Result message type in the same .proto and then specify a field of type Result in SearchResponse:

message SearchResponse {
  repeated Result result = 1;
}

message Result {
  optional string url = 1;
  optional string title = 2;
  repeated string snippets = 3;
}

Importing Definitions

In the above example, the Result message type is defined in the same file as SearchResponse – what if the message type you want to use as a field type is already defined in another .proto file?

You can use definitions from other .proto files by importing them. To import another .proto’s definitions, you add an import statement to the top of your file:

import "myproject/other_protos.proto";

By default, you can use definitions only from directly imported .proto files. However, sometimes you may need to move a .proto file to a new location. Instead of moving the .proto file directly and updating all the call sites in a single change, you can put a placeholder .proto file in the old location to forward all the imports to the new location using the import public notion.

Note that the public import functionality is not available in Java.

import public dependencies can be transitively relied upon by any code importing the proto containing the import public statement. For example:

// new.proto
// All definitions are moved here

// old.proto
// This is the proto that all clients are importing.
import public "new.proto";
import "other.proto";

// client.proto
import "old.proto";
// You use definitions from old.proto and new.proto, but not other.proto

The protocol compiler searches for imported files in a set of directories specified on the protocol compiler command line using the -I/--proto_path flag. If no flag was given, it looks in the directory in which the compiler was invoked. In general you should set the --proto_path flag to the root of your project and use fully qualified names for all imports.

Using proto3 Message Types

It’s possible to import proto3 message types and use them in your proto2 messages, and vice versa. However, proto2 enums cannot be used in proto3 syntax.

Nested Types

You can define and use message types inside other message types, as in the following example – here the Result message is defined inside the SearchResponse message:

message SearchResponse {
  message Result {
    optional string url = 1;
    optional string title = 2;
    repeated string snippets = 3;
  }
  repeated Result result = 1;
}

If you want to reuse this message type outside its parent message type, you refer to it as _Parent_._Type_:

message SomeOtherMessage {
  optional SearchResponse.Result result = 1;
}

You can nest messages as deeply as you like. In the example below, note that the two nested types named Inner are entirely independent, since they are defined within different messages:

message Outer {       // Level 0
  message MiddleAA {  // Level 1
    message Inner {   // Level 2
      optional int64 ival = 1;
      optional bool  booly = 2;
    }
  }
  message MiddleBB {  // Level 1
    message Inner {   // Level 2
      optional string name = 1;
      optional bool   flag = 2;
    }
  }
}

Groups

Note that the groups feature is deprecated and should not be used when creating new message types. Use nested message types instead.

Groups are another way to nest information in your message definitions. For example, another way to specify a SearchResponse containing a number of Results is as follows:

message SearchResponse {
  repeated group Result = 1 {
    optional string url = 1;
    optional string title = 2;
    repeated string snippets = 3;
  }
}

A group simply combines a nested message type and a field into a single declaration. In your code, you can treat this message just as if it had a Result type field called result (the latter name is converted to lower-case so that it does not conflict with the former). Therefore, this example is exactly equivalent to the SearchResponse above, except that the message has a different wire format.

Updating A Message Type

If an existing message type no longer meets all your needs – for example, you’d like the message format to have an extra field – but you’d still like to use code created with the old format, don’t worry! It’s very simple to update message types without breaking any of your existing code when you use the binary wire format.

If your use case isn’t covered in the safe-or-not tool, check Proto Best Practices and the following rules:

• Don’t change the field numbers for any existing fields. “Changing” the field number is equivalent to deleting the field and adding a new field with the same type. If you want to renumber a field, see the instructions for deleting a field.
• Any new fields that you add should be optional or repeated. This means that any messages serialized by code using your “old” message format can be parsed by your new generated code, as they won’t be missing any required elements. You should set up sensible default values for these elements so that new code can properly interact with messages generated by old code. Similarly, messages created by your new code can be parsed by your old code: old binaries simply ignore the new field when parsing. However, the unknown fields are not discarded, and if the message is later serialized, the unknown fields are serialized along with it – so if the message is passed on to new code, the new fields are still available.
• Non-required fields can be removed, as long as the field number is not used again in your updated message type. You may want to rename the field instead, perhaps adding the prefix “OBSOLETE_”, or make the field number reserved, so that future users of your .proto can’t accidentally reuse the number.
• A non-required field can be converted to an extension and vice versa, as long as the type and number stay the same.
• int32, uint32, int64, uint64, and bool are all compatible – this means you can change a field from one of these types to another without breaking forwards- or backwards-compatibility. If a number is parsed from the wire which doesn’t fit in the corresponding type, you will get the same effect as if you had cast the number to that type in C++ (for example, if a 64-bit number is read as an int32, it will be truncated to 32 bits).
• sint32 and sint64 are compatible with each other but are not compatible with the other integer types.
• string and bytes are compatible as long as the bytes are valid UTF-8.
• Embedded messages are compatible with bytes if the bytes contain an encoded version of the message.
• fixed32 is compatible with sfixed32, and fixed64 with sfixed64.
• For string, bytes, and message fields, optional is compatible with repeated. Given serialized data of a repeated field as input, clients that expect this field to be optional will take the last input value if it’s a primitive type field or merge all input elements if it’s a message type field. Note that this is not generally safe for numeric types, including bools and enums. Repeated fields of numeric types can be serialized in the packed format, which will not be parsed correctly when an optional field is expected.
• Changing a default value is generally OK, as long as you remember that default values are never sent over the wire. Thus, if a program receives a message in which a particular field isn’t set, the program will see the default value as it was defined in that program’s version of the protocol. It will NOT see the default value that was defined in the sender’s code.
• enum is compatible with int32, uint32, int64, and uint64 in terms of wire format (note that values will be truncated if they don’t fit), but be aware that client code may treat them differently when the message is deserialized. Notably, unrecognized enum values are discarded when the message is deserialized, which makes the field’s has.. accessor return false and its getter return the first value listed in the enum definition, or the default value if one is specified. In the case of repeated enum fields, any unrecognized values are stripped out of the list. However, an integer field will always preserve its value. Because of this, you need to be very careful when upgrading an integer to an enum in terms of receiving out of bounds enum values on the wire.
• In the current Java and C++ implementations, when unrecognized enum values are stripped out, they are stored along with other unknown fields. Note that this can result in strange behavior if this data is serialized and then reparsed by a client that recognizes these values. In the case of optional fields, even if a new value was written after the original message was deserialized, the old value will be still read by clients that recognize it. In the case of repeated fields, the old values will appear after any recognized and newly-added values, which means that order will not be preserved.
• Changing a single optional field or extension into a member of a new oneof is binary compatible, however for some languages (notably, Go) the generated code’s API will change in incompatible ways. For this reason, Google does not make such changes in its public APIs, as documented in AIP-180. With the same caveat about source-compatibility, moving multiple fields into a new oneof may be safe if you are sure that no code sets more than one at a time. Moving fields into an existing oneof is not safe. Likewise, changing a single field oneof to an optional field or extension is safe.
• Changing a field between a map<K, V> and the corresponding repeated message field is binary compatible (see Maps, below, for the message layout and other restrictions). However, the safety of the change is application-dependent: when deserializing and reserializing a message, clients using the repeated field definition will produce a semantically identical result; however, clients using the map field definition may reorder entries and drop entries with duplicate keys.

Extensions

An extension is a field defined outside of its container message; usually in a .proto file separate from the container message’s .proto file.

Why Use Extensions?

There are two main reasons to use extensions:

• The container message’s .proto file will have fewer imports/dependencies. This can improve build times, break circular dependencies, and otherwise promote loose coupling. Extensions are very good for this.
• Allow systems to attach data to a container message with minimal dependency and coordination. Extensions are not a great solution for this because of the limited field number space and the Consequences of Reusing Field Numbers. If your use case requires very low coordination for a large number of extensions, consider using the Any message type instead.

Example Extension?

Let’s look at an example extension:

// file kittens/video_ext.proto

import "kittens/video.proto";
import "media/user_content.proto";

package kittens;

// This extension allows kitten videos in a media.UserContent message.
extend media.UserContent {
  // Video is a message imported from kittens/video.proto
  repeated Video kitten_videos = 126;
}

Note that the file defining the extension (kittens/video_ext.proto) imports the container message’s file (media/user_content.proto).

The container message must reserve a subset of its field numbers for extensions.

// file media/user_content.proto

package media;

// A container message to hold stuff that a user has created.
message UserContent {
  extensions 100 to 199;
}

The container message’s file (media/user_content.proto) defines the message UserContent, which reserves field numbers [100 to 199] for extensions.

Note that the container message’s file (media/user_content.proto) does not import the kitten_video extension definition (kittens/video_ext.proto)

There is no difference in the wire-format encoding of extension fields as compared to a standard field with the same field number, type, and cardinality. Therefore, it is safe to move a standard field out of its container to be an extension or to move an extension field into its container message as a standard field so long as the field number, type, and cardinality remain constant.

However, because extensions are defined outside of the container message, no specialized accessors are generated to get and set specific extension fields. For our example, the protobuf compiler will not generate AddKittenVideos() or GetKittenVideos() accessors. Instead, extensions are accessed through parameterized functions like: HasExtension(), ClearExtension(), GetExtension(), MutableExtension(), and AddExtension().

In C++, it would look something like:

UserContent user_content;
user_content.AddExtension(kittens::kitten_videos, new kittens::Video());
assert(1 == user_content.GetExtensionCount(kittens::kitten_videos));
user_content.GetExtension(kittens::kitten_videos, 0);

Defining Extension Ranges

If you are the owner of a container message, you will need to define an extension range for the extensions to your message.

Field numbers allocated to extension fields cannot be reused for standard fields.

It is safe to expand an extension range after it is defined. A good default is to allocate 1000 relatively small numbers, and densely populate that space using extension declarations:

message ModernExtendableMessage {
  extensions 1000 to 2000;
}

It is not safe to increase the start field number nor decrease the end field number to move or shrink an extension range. These changes can invalidate an existing extension.

Prefer using field numbers 1 to 15 for standard fields that are populated in most instances of your proto. It is not recommended to use these numbers for extensions.

If your numbering convention might involve extensions having very large field numbers, you can specify that your extension range goes up to the maximum possible field number using the max keyword:

message Foo {
  extensions 1000 to max;
}

max is 2²⁹ - 1, or 536,870,911.

Choosing Extension Numbers

Extensions are just fields that can be specified outside of their container messages. All the same rules for Assigning Field Numbers apply to extension field numbers. The same Consequences of Reusing Field Numbers also apply to reusing extension field numbers.

Specifying Extension Types

Extensions can be of any field type except oneofs and maps.

Nested Extensions (not recommended)

You can declare extensions in the scope of another message:

import "common/user_profile.proto";

package puppies;

message Photo {
  extend common.UserProfile {
    optional int32 likes_count = 111;
  }
  ...
}

In this case, the C++ code to access this extension is:

UserProfile user_profile;
user_profile.SetExtension(puppies::Photo::likes_count, 42);

In other words, the only effect is that likes_count is defined within the scope of puppies.Photo.

This is a common source of confusion: Declaring an extend block nested inside a message type does not imply any relationship between the outer type and the extended type. In particular, the above example does not mean that Photo is any sort of subclass of UserProfile. All it means is that the symbol likes_count is declared inside the scope of Photo; it’s simply a static member.

A common pattern is to define extensions inside the scope of the extension’s field type - for example, here’s an extension to media.UserContent of type puppies.Photo, where the extension is defined as part of Photo:

import "media/user_content.proto";

package puppies;

message Photo {
  extend media.UserContent {
    optional Photo puppy_photo = 127;
  }
  ...
}

However, there is no requirement that an extension with a message type be defined inside that type. You can also use the standard definition pattern:

import "media/user_content.proto";

package puppies;

message Photo {
  ...
}

// This can even be in a different file.
extend media.UserContent {
  optional Photo puppy_photo = 127;
}

This standard (file-level) syntax is preferred to avoid confusion. The nested syntax is often mistaken for subclassing by users who are not already familiar with extensions.

Any

The Any message type lets you use messages as embedded types without having their .proto definition. An Any contains an arbitrary serialized message as bytes, along with a URL that acts as a globally unique identifier for and resolves to that message’s type. To use the Any type, you need to import google/protobuf/any.proto.

import "google/protobuf/any.proto";

message ErrorStatus {
  string message = 1;
  repeated google.protobuf.Any details = 2;
}

The default type URL for a given message type is type.googleapis.com/_packagename_._messagename_.

Different language implementations will support runtime library helpers to pack and unpack Any values in a typesafe manner – for example, in Java, the Any type will have special pack() and unpack() accessors, while in C++ there are PackFrom() and UnpackTo() methods:

// Storing an arbitrary message type in Any.
NetworkErrorDetails details = ...;
ErrorStatus status;
status.add_details()->PackFrom(details);

// Reading an arbitrary message from Any.
ErrorStatus status = ...;
for (const google::protobuf::Any& detail : status.details()) {
  if (detail.Is<NetworkErrorDetails>()) {
    NetworkErrorDetails network_error;
    detail.UnpackTo(&network_error);
    ... processing network_error ...
  }
}

Currently the runtime libraries for working with Any types are under development.

Oneof

If you have a message with many optional fields and where at most one field will be set at the same time, you can enforce this behavior and save memory by using the oneof feature.

Oneof fields are like optional fields except all the fields in a oneof share memory, and at most one field can be set at the same time. Setting any member of the oneof automatically clears all the other members. You can check which value in a oneof is set (if any) using a special case() or WhichOneof() method, depending on your chosen language.

Using Oneof

To define a oneof in your .proto you use the oneof keyword followed by your oneof name, in this case test_oneof:

message SampleMessage {
  oneof test_oneof {
     string name = 4;
     SubMessage sub_message = 9;
  }
}

You then add your oneof fields to the oneof definition. You can add fields of any type, but cannot use the required, optional, or repeated keywords. If you need to add a repeated field to a oneof, you can use a message containing the repeated field.

In your generated code, oneof fields have the same getters and setters as regular optional methods. You also get a special method for checking which value (if any) in the oneof is set. You can find out more about the oneof API for your chosen language in the relevant API reference.

Oneof Features

• Setting a oneof field will automatically clear all other members of the oneof. So if you set several oneof fields, only the last field you set will still have a value.

  SampleMessage message;
  message.set_name("name");
  CHECK(message.has_name());
  message.mutable_sub_message();   // Will clear name field.
  CHECK(!message.has_name());
  

• If the parser encounters multiple members of the same oneof on the wire, only the last member seen is used in the parsed message.

• Extensions are not supported for oneof.

• A oneof cannot be repeated.

• Reflection APIs work for oneof fields.

• If you set a oneof field to the default value (such as setting an int32 oneof field to 0), the “case” of that oneof field will be set, and the value will be serialized on the wire.

• If you’re using C++, make sure your code doesn’t cause memory crashes. The following sample code will crash because sub_message was already deleted by calling the set_name() method.

  SampleMessage message;
  SubMessage* sub_message = message.mutable_sub_message();
  message.set_name("name");      // Will delete sub_message
  sub_message->set_...            // Crashes here
  

• Again in C++, if you Swap() two messages with oneofs, each message will end up with the other’s oneof case: in the example below, msg1 will have a sub_message and msg2 will have a name.

  SampleMessage msg1;
  msg1.set_name("name");
  SampleMessage msg2;
  msg2.mutable_sub_message();
  msg1.swap(&msg2);
  CHECK(msg1.has_sub_message());
  CHECK(msg2.has_name());
  

Backwards-compatibility issues

Be careful when adding or removing oneof fields. If checking the value of a oneof returns None/NOT_SET, it could mean that the oneof has not been set or it has been set to a field in a different version of the oneof. There is no way to tell the difference, since there’s no way to know if an unknown field on the wire is a member of the oneof.

Tag Reuse Issues

• Move optional fields into or out of a oneof: You may lose some of your information (some fields will be cleared) after the message is serialized and parsed. However, you can safely move a single field into a new oneof and may be able to move multiple fields if it is known that only one is ever set. See Updating A Message Type for further details.
• Delete a oneof field and add it back: This may clear your currently set oneof field after the message is serialized and parsed.
• Split or merge oneof: This has similar issues to moving regular optional fields.

Maps

If you want to create an associative map as part of your data definition, protocol buffers provides a handy shortcut syntax:

map<key_type, value_type> map_field = N;

…where the key_type can be any integral or string type (so, any scalar type except for floating point types and bytes). Note that enum is not a valid key_type. The value_type can be any type except another map.

So, for example, if you wanted to create a map of projects where each Project message is associated with a string key, you could define it like this:

map<string, Project> projects = 3;

The generated map API is currently available for all proto2 supported languages. You can find out more about the map API for your chosen language in the relevant API reference.

Maps Features

• Extensions are not supported for maps.
• Maps cannot be repeated, optional, or required.
• Wire format ordering and map iteration ordering of map values is undefined, so you cannot rely on your map items being in a particular order.
• When generating text format for a .proto, maps are sorted by key. Numeric keys are sorted numerically.
• When parsing from the wire or when merging, if there are duplicate map keys the last key seen is used. When parsing a map from text format, parsing may fail if there are duplicate keys.

Backwards compatibility

The map syntax is equivalent to the following on the wire, so protocol buffers implementations that do not support maps can still handle your data:

message MapFieldEntry {
  optional key_type key = 1;
  optional value_type value = 2;
}

repeated MapFieldEntry map_field = N;

Any protocol buffers implementation that supports maps must both produce and accept data that can be accepted by the above definition.

Packages

You can add an optional package specifier to a .proto file to prevent name clashes between protocol message types.

package foo.bar;
message Open { ... }

You can then use the package specifier when defining fields of your message type:

message Foo {
  ...
  optional foo.bar.Open open = 1;
  ...
}

The way a package specifier affects the generated code depends on your chosen language:

• In C++ the generated classes are wrapped inside a C++ namespace. For example, Open would be in the namespace foo::bar.
• In Java, the package is used as the Java package, unless you explicitly provide a option java_package in your .proto file.
• In Python, the package directive is ignored, since Python modules are organized according to their location in the file system.
• In Go, the package directive is ignored, and the generated .pb.go file is in the package named after the corresponding go_proto_library rule.

Note that even when the package directive does not directly affect the generated code, for example in Python, it is still strongly recommended to specify the package for the .proto file, as otherwise it may lead to naming conflicts in descriptors and make the proto not portable for other languages.

Packages and Name Resolution

Type name resolution in the protocol buffer language works like C++: first the innermost scope is searched, then the next-innermost, and so on, with each package considered to be “inner” to its parent package. A leading ‘.’ (for example, .foo.bar.Baz) means to start from the outermost scope instead.

The protocol buffer compiler resolves all type names by parsing the imported .proto files. The code generator for each language knows how to refer to each type in that language, even if it has different scoping rules.

Defining Services

If you want to use your message types with an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) system, you can define an RPC service interface in a .proto file and the protocol buffer compiler will generate service interface code and stubs in your chosen language. So, for example, if you want to define an RPC service with a method that takes your SearchRequest and returns a SearchResponse, you can define it in your .proto file as follows:

service SearchService {
  rpc Search(SearchRequest) returns (SearchResponse);
}

By default, the protocol compiler will then generate an abstract interface called SearchService and a corresponding “stub” implementation. The stub forwards all calls to an RpcChannel, which in turn is an abstract interface that you must define yourself in terms of your own RPC system. For example, you might implement an RpcChannel which serializes the message and sends it to a server via HTTP. In other words, the generated stub provides a type-safe interface for making protocol-buffer-based RPC calls, without locking you into any particular RPC implementation. So, in C++, you might end up with code like this:

using google::protobuf;

protobuf::RpcChannel* channel;
protobuf::RpcController* controller;
SearchService* service;
SearchRequest request;
SearchResponse response;

void DoSearch() {
  // You provide classes MyRpcChannel and MyRpcController, which implement
  // the abstract interfaces protobuf::RpcChannel and protobuf::RpcController.
  channel = new MyRpcChannel("somehost.example.com:1234");
  controller = new MyRpcController;

  // The protocol compiler generates the SearchService class based on the
  // definition given above.
  service = new SearchService::Stub(channel);

  // Set up the request.
  request.set_query("protocol buffers");

  // Execute the RPC.
  service->Search(controller, &request, &response,
                  protobuf::NewCallback(&Done));
}

void Done() {
  delete service;
  delete channel;
  delete controller;
}

All service classes also implement the Service interface, which provides a way to call specific methods without knowing the method name or its input and output types at compile time. On the server side, this can be used to implement an RPC server with which you could register services.

using google::protobuf;

class ExampleSearchService : public SearchService {
 public:
  void Search(protobuf::RpcController* controller,
              const SearchRequest* request,
              SearchResponse* response,
              protobuf::Closure* done) {
    if (request->query() == "google") {
      response->add_result()->set_url("http://www.google.com");
    } else if (request->query() == "protocol buffers") {
      response->add_result()->set_url("http://protobuf.googlecode.com");
    }
    done->Run();
  }
};

int main() {
  // You provide class MyRpcServer.  It does not have to implement any
  // particular interface; this is just an example.
  MyRpcServer server;

  protobuf::Service* service = new ExampleSearchService;
  server.ExportOnPort(1234, service);
  server.Run();

  delete service;
  return 0;
}

If you don’t want to plug in your own existing RPC system, you can now use gRPC: a language- and platform-neutral open source RPC system developed at Google. gRPC works particularly well with protocol buffers and lets you generate the relevant RPC code directly from your .proto files using a special protocol buffer compiler plugin. However, as there are potential compatibility issues between clients and servers generated with proto2 and proto3, we recommend that you use proto3 for defining gRPC services. You can find out more about proto3 syntax in the Proto3 Language Guide. If you do want to use proto2 with gRPC, you need to use version 3.0.0 or higher of the protocol buffers compiler and libraries.

In addition to gRPC, there are also a number of ongoing third-party projects to develop RPC implementations for Protocol Buffers. For a list of links to projects we know about, see the third-party add-ons wiki page.

Options

Individual declarations in a .proto file can be annotated with a number of options. Options do not change the overall meaning of a declaration, but may affect the way it is handled in a particular context. The complete list of available options is defined in /google/protobuf/descriptor.proto.

Some options are file-level options, meaning they should be written at the top-level scope, not inside any message, enum, or service definition. Some options are message-level options, meaning they should be written inside message definitions. Some options are field-level options, meaning they should be written inside field definitions. Options can also be written on enum types, enum values, oneof fields, service types, and service methods; however, no useful options currently exist for any of these.

Here are a few of the most commonly used options:

• java_package (file option): The package you want to use for your generated Java classes. If no explicit java_package option is given in the .proto file, then by default the proto package (specified using the “package” keyword in the .proto file) will be used. However, proto packages generally do not make good Java packages since proto packages are not expected to start with reverse domain names. If not generating Java code, this option has no effect.

  option java_package = "com.example.foo";
  

• java_outer_classname (file option): The class name (and hence the file name) for the wrapper Java class you want to generate. If no explicit java_outer_classname is specified in the .proto file, the class name will be constructed by converting the .proto file name to camel-case (so foo_bar.proto becomes FooBar.java). If the java_multiple_files option is disabled, then all other classes/enums/etc. generated for the .proto file will be generated within this outer wrapper Java class as nested classes/enums/etc. If not generating Java code, this option has no effect.

  option java_outer_classname = "Ponycopter";
  

• java_multiple_files (file option): If false, only a single .java file will be generated for this .proto file, and all the Java classes/enums/etc. generated for the top-level messages, services, and enumerations will be nested inside of an outer class (see java_outer_classname). If true, separate .java files will be generated for each of the Java classes/enums/etc. generated for the top-level messages, services, and enumerations, and the wrapper Java class generated for this .proto file won’t contain any nested classes/enums/etc. This is a Boolean option which defaults to false. If not generating Java code, this option has no effect.

  option java_multiple_files = true;
  

• optimize_for (file option): Can be set to SPEED, CODE_SIZE, or LITE_RUNTIME. This affects the C++ and Java code generators (and possibly third-party generators) in the following ways:

  • SPEED (default): The protocol buffer compiler will generate code for serializing, parsing, and performing other common operations on your message types. This code is highly optimized.
  • CODE_SIZE: The protocol buffer compiler will generate minimal classes and will rely on shared, reflection-based code to implement serialialization, parsing, and various other operations. The generated code will thus be much smaller than with SPEED, but operations will be slower. Classes will still implement exactly the same public API as they do in SPEED mode. This mode is most useful in apps that contain a very large number of .proto files and do not need all of them to be blindingly fast.
  • LITE_RUNTIME: The protocol buffer compiler will generate classes that depend only on the “lite” runtime library (libprotobuf-lite instead of libprotobuf). The lite runtime is much smaller than the full library (around an order of magnitude smaller) but omits certain features like descriptors and reflection. This is particularly useful for apps running on constrained platforms like mobile phones. The compiler will still generate fast implementations of all methods as it does in SPEED mode. Generated classes will only implement the MessageLite interface in each language, which provides only a subset of the methods of the full Message interface.

  option optimize_for = CODE_SIZE;
  

• cc_generic_services, java_generic_services, py_generic_services (file options): Whether or not the protocol buffer compiler should generate abstract service code based on services definitions in C++, Java, and Python, respectively. For legacy reasons, these default to true. However, as of version 2.3.0 (January 2010), it is considered preferable for RPC implementations to provide code generator plugins to generate code more specific to each system, rather than rely on the “abstract” services.

  // This file relies on plugins to generate service code.
  option cc_generic_services = false;
  option java_generic_services = false;
  option py_generic_services = false;
  

• cc_enable_arenas (file option): Enables arena allocation for C++ generated code.

• message_set_wire_format (message option): If set to true, the message uses a different binary format intended to be compatible with an old format used inside Google called MessageSet. Users outside Google will probably never need to use this option. The message must be declared exactly as follows:

  message Foo {
    option message_set_wire_format = true;
    extensions 4 to max;
  }
  

• packed (field option): If set to true on a repeated field of a basic numeric type, a more compact encoding is used. There is no downside to using this option. However, note that prior to version 2.3.0, parsers that received packed data when not expected would ignore it. Therefore, it was not possible to change an existing field to packed format without breaking wire compatibility. In 2.3.0 and later, this change is safe, as parsers for packable fields will always accept both formats, but be careful if you have to deal with old programs using old protobuf versions.

  repeated int32 samples = 4 [packed = true];
  

• deprecated (field option): If set to true, indicates that the field is deprecated and should not be used by new code. In most languages this has no actual effect. In Java, this becomes a @Deprecated annotation. For C++, clang-tidy will generate warnings whenever deprecated fields are used. In the future, other language-specific code generators may generate deprecation annotations on the field’s accessors, which will in turn cause a warning to be emitted when compiling code which attempts to use the field. If the field is not used by anyone and you want to prevent new users from using it, consider replacing the field declaration with a reserved statement.

  optional int32 old_field = 6 [deprecated=true];
  

Enum Value Options

Enum value options are supported. You can use the deprecated option to indicate that a value shouldn’t be used anymore. You can also create custom options using extensions.

The following example shows the syntax for adding these options:

import "net/proto2/proto/descriptor.proto";

extend proto2.EnumValueOptions {
  optional string string_name = 123456789;
}

enum Data {
  DATA_UNKNOWN = 0;
  DATA_SEARCH = 1 [deprecated = true];
  DATA_DISPLAY = 2 [
    (string_name) = "display_value"
  ]
}

Continue to the next section, Custom Options to see how to apply custom options to enum values and to fields.

Custom Options

Protocol Buffers even allow you to define and use your own options. Note that this is an advanced feature which most people don’t need. Since options are defined by the messages defined in google/protobuf/descriptor.proto (like FileOptions or FieldOptions), defining your own options is simply a matter of extending those messages. For example:

import "google/protobuf/descriptor.proto";

extend google.protobuf.MessageOptions {
  optional string my_option = 51234;
}

message MyMessage {
  option (my_option) = "Hello world!";
}

Here we have defined a new message-level option by extending MessageOptions. When we then use the option, the option name must be enclosed in parentheses to indicate that it is an extension. We can now read the value of my_option in C++ like so:

string value = MyMessage::descriptor()->options().GetExtension(my_option);

Here, MyMessage::descriptor()->options() returns the MessageOptions protocol message for MyMessage. Reading custom options from it is just like reading any other extension.

Similarly, in Java we would write:

String value = MyProtoFile.MyMessage.getDescriptor().getOptions()
  .getExtension(MyProtoFile.myOption);

In Python it would be:

value = my_proto_file_pb2.MyMessage.DESCRIPTOR.GetOptions()
  .Extensions[my_proto_file_pb2.my_option]

Custom options can be defined for every kind of construct in the Protocol Buffers language. Here is an example that uses every kind of option:

import "google/protobuf/descriptor.proto";

extend google.protobuf.FileOptions {
  optional string my_file_option = 50000;
}
extend google.protobuf.MessageOptions {
  optional int32 my_message_option = 50001;
}
extend google.protobuf.FieldOptions {
  optional float my_field_option = 50002;
}
extend google.protobuf.OneofOptions {
  optional int64 my_oneof_option = 50003;
}
extend google.protobuf.EnumOptions {
  optional bool my_enum_option = 50004;
}
extend google.protobuf.EnumValueOptions {
  optional uint32 my_enum_value_option = 50005;
}
extend google.protobuf.ServiceOptions {
  optional MyEnum my_service_option = 50006;
}
extend google.protobuf.MethodOptions {
  optional MyMessage my_method_option = 50007;
}

option (my_file_option) = "Hello world!";

message MyMessage {
  option (my_message_option) = 1234;

  optional int32 foo = 1 [(my_field_option) = 4.5];
  optional string bar = 2;
  oneof qux {
    option (my_oneof_option) = 42;

    string quux = 3;
  }
}

enum MyEnum {
  option (my_enum_option) = true;

  FOO = 1 [(my_enum_value_option) = 321];
  BAR = 2;
}

message RequestType {}
message ResponseType {}

service MyService {
  option (my_service_option) = FOO;

  rpc MyMethod(RequestType) returns(ResponseType) {
    // Note:  my_method_option has type MyMessage.  We can set each field
    //   within it using a separate "option" line.
    option (my_method_option).foo = 567;
    option (my_method_option).bar = "Some string";
  }
}

Note that if you want to use a custom option in a package other than the one in which it was defined, you must prefix the option name with the package name, just as you would for type names. For example:

// foo.proto
import "google/protobuf/descriptor.proto";
package foo;
extend google.protobuf.MessageOptions {
  optional string my_option = 51234;
}

// bar.proto
import "foo.proto";
package bar;
message MyMessage {
  option (foo.my_option) = "Hello world!";
}

One last thing: Since custom options are extensions, they must be assigned field numbers like any other field or extension. In the examples above, we have used field numbers in the range 50000-99999. This range is reserved for internal use within individual organizations, so you can use numbers in this range freely for in-house applications. If you intend to use custom options in public applications, however, then it is important that you make sure that your field numbers are globally unique. To obtain globally unique field numbers, send a request to add an entry to protobuf global extension registry. Usually you only need one extension number. You can declare multiple options with only one extension number by putting them in a sub-message:

message FooOptions {
  optional int32 opt1 = 1;
  optional string opt2 = 2;
}

extend google.protobuf.FieldOptions {
  optional FooOptions foo_options = 1234;
}

// usage:
message Bar {
  optional int32 a = 1 [(foo_options).opt1 = 123, (foo_options).opt2 = "baz"];
  // alternative aggregate syntax (uses TextFormat):
  optional int32 b = 2 [(foo_options) = { opt1: 123 opt2: "baz" }];
}

Also, note that each option type (file-level, message-level, field-level, etc.) has its own number space, so, for example, you could declare extensions of FieldOptions and MessageOptions with the same number.

Option Retention

Options have a notion of retention, which controls whether an option is retained in the generated code. Options have runtime retention by default, meaning that they are retained in the generated code and are thus visible at runtime in the generated descriptor pool. However, you can set retention = RETENTION_SOURCE to specify that an option (or field within an option) must not be retained at runtime. This is called source retention.

Option retention is an advanced feature that most users should not need to worry about, but it can be useful if you would like to use certain options without paying the code size cost of retaining them in your binaries. Options with source retention are still visible to protoc and protoc plugins, so code generators can use them to customize their behavior.

Retention can be set directly on an option, like this:

extend google.protobuf.FileOptions {
  optional int32 source_retention_option = 1234
      [retention = RETENTION_SOURCE];
}

It can also be set on a plain field, in which case it takes effect only when that field appears inside an option:

message OptionsMessage {
  optional int32 source_retention_field = 1 [retention = RETENTION_SOURCE];
}

You can set retention = RETENTION_RUNTIME if you like, but this has no effect since it is the default behavior. When a message field is marked RETENTION_SOURCE, its entire contents are dropped; fields inside it cannot override that by trying to set RETENTION_RUNTIME.

Option Targets

Fields have a targets option which controls the types of entities that the field may apply to when used as an option. For example, if a field has targets = TARGET_TYPE_MESSAGE then that field cannot be set in a custom option on an enum (or any other non-message entity). Protoc enforces this and will raise an error if there is a violation of the target constraints.

At first glance, this feature may seem unnecessary given that every custom option is an extension of the options message for a specific entity, which already constrains the option to that one entity. However, option targets are useful in the case where you have a shared options message applied to multiple entity types and you want to control the usage of individual fields in that message. For example:

message MyOptions {
  optional string file_only_option = 1 [targets = TARGET_TYPE_FILE];
  optional int32 message_and_enum_option = 2 [targets = TARGET_TYPE_MESSAGE,
                                              targets = TARGET_TYPE_ENUM];
}

extend google.protobuf.FileOptions {
  optional MyOptions file_options = 50000;
}

extend google.protobuf.MessageOptions {
  optional MyOptions message_options = 50000;
}

extend google.protobuf.EnumOptions {
  optional MyOptions enum_options = 50000;
}

// OK: this field is allowed on file options
option (file_options).file_only_option = "abc";

message MyMessage {
  // OK: this field is allowed on both message and enum options
  option (message_options).message_and_enum_option = 42;
}

enum MyEnum {
  MY_ENUM_UNSPECIFIED = 0;
  // Error: file_only_option cannot be set on an enum.
  option (enum_options).file_only_option = "xyz";
}

Generating Your Classes

To generate the Java, Python, or C++ code you need to work with the message types defined in a .proto file, you need to run the protocol buffer compiler protoc on the .proto. If you haven’t installed the compiler, download the package and follow the instructions in the README.

The Protocol Compiler is invoked as follows:

protoc --proto_path=IMPORT_PATH --cpp_out=DST_DIR --java_out=DST_DIR --python_out=DST_DIR path/to/file.proto

• IMPORT_PATH specifies a directory in which to look for .proto files when resolving import directives. If omitted, the current directory is used. Multiple import directories can be specified by passing the --proto_path option multiple times; they will be searched in order. -I=_IMPORT_PATH_ can be used as a short form of --proto_path.

• You can provide one or more output directives:

  • --cpp_out generates C++ code in DST_DIR. See the C++ generated code reference for more.
  • --java_out generates Java code in DST_DIR. See the Java generated code reference for more.
  • --python_out generates Python code in DST_DIR. See the Python generated code reference for more.

  As an extra convenience, if the DST_DIR ends in .zip or .jar, the compiler will write the output to a single ZIP-format archive file with the given name. .jar outputs will also be given a manifest file as required by the Java JAR specification. Note that if the output archive already exists, it will be overwritten; the compiler is not smart enough to add files to an existing archive.

• You must provide one or more .proto files as input. Multiple .proto files can be specified at once. Although the files are named relative to the current directory, each file must reside in one of the IMPORT_PATHs so that the compiler can determine its canonical name.

File location

Prefer not to put .proto files in the same directory as other language sources. Consider creating a subpackage proto for .proto files, under the root package for your project.

Location Should be Language-agnostic

When working with Java code, it’s handy to put related .proto files in the same directory as the Java source. However, if any non-Java code ever uses the same protos, the path prefix will no longer make sense. So in general, put the protos in a related language-agnostic directory such as //myteam/mypackage.

The exception to this rule is when it’s clear that the protos will be used only in a Java context, such as for testing.

Supported Platforms

For information about:

• the operating systems, compilers, build systems, and C++ versions that are supported, see Foundational C++ Support Policy.
• the PHP versions that are supported, see Supported PHP versions.