README.md

Hello Protocol Buffers

Protocol buffers, are essentially a data format, much like JSON or XML in the sense that they store structured data which can be serialized or de-serialized by a wide number of different languages.

This is an example using Protocol Buffers in Go language

Install protoc protobuf compiler and protoc-gen-go plugin

• Protobuf compiler is a standalone binary named protoc
  
• protoc-gen-go is requried by protoc compiler to generate Go code
  

$ go get -v -u github.com/golang/protobuf/{proto,protoc-gen-go}

If you are having issues with binary not found on your system make sure that both GOPATH and GOROOT are added to PATH. Also check following issue for more details.

Create .porto data structure

Once protoc binary is installed we can create *.proto data definition; in this case that is message.proto file:

syntax="proto3";

option go_package = "/greeting";


message Message {
      string greet = 1;

}

Compile message.proto

Now we can compile structure using the protocol buffer compiler. The protoc compiler produces Go output when invoked with the go_out flag. The argument to the go_out flag is the directory where you want the compiler to write your Go output.

$ protoc --go_out=. message.proto

The compiler will read input file message.proto, and write output file message.pb.go to the out directory.

Test

go run .