prost is a Protocol Buffers
implementation for the Rust Language. prost
generates simple, idiomatic Rust code from proto2 and proto3 files.
Compared to other Protocol Buffers implementations, prost
- Generates simple, idiomatic, and readable Rust types by taking advantage of
Rust
deriveattributes. - Retains comments from
.protofiles in generated Rust code. - Allows existing Rust types (not generated from a
.proto) to be serialized and deserialized by adding attributes. - Uses the
bytes::{Buf, BufMut}abstractions for serialization instead ofstd::io::{Read, Write}. - Respects the Protobuf
packagespecifier when organizing generated code into Rust modules. - Preserves unknown enum values during deserialization.
- Does not include support for runtime reflection or message descriptors.
First, add prost and its public dependencies to your Cargo.toml:
[dependencies]
prost = "0.13"
# Only necessary if using Protobuf well-known types:
prost-types = "0.13"The recommended way to add .proto compilation to a Cargo project is to use the
prost-build library. See the prost-build documentation for
more details and examples.
See the snazzy repository for a simple start-to-finish example.
prost follows the tokio-rs project's MSRV model and supports 1.70. For more
information on the tokio msrv policy you can check it out here
prost generates Rust code from source .proto files using the proto2 or
proto3 syntax. prost's goal is to make the generated code as simple as
possible.
With prost-build v0.11 release, protoc will be required to invoke
compile_protos (unless skip_protoc is enabled). Prost will no longer provide
bundled protoc or attempt to compile protoc for users. For install
instructions for protoc, please check out the protobuf install instructions.
Prost can now generate code for .proto files that don't have a package spec.
prost will translate the Protobuf package into
a Rust module. For example, given the package specifier:
package foo.bar;All Rust types generated from the file will be in the foo::bar module.
Given a simple message declaration:
// Sample message.
message Foo {
}prost will generate the following Rust struct:
/// Sample message.
#[derive(Clone, Debug, PartialEq, Message)]
pub struct Foo {
}Fields in Protobuf messages are translated into Rust as public struct fields of the corresponding type.
Scalar value types are converted as follows:
| Protobuf Type | Rust Type |
|---|---|
double |
f64 |
float |
f32 |
int32 |
i32 |
int64 |
i64 |
uint32 |
u32 |
uint64 |
u64 |
sint32 |
i32 |
sint64 |
i64 |
fixed32 |
u32 |
fixed64 |
u64 |
sfixed32 |
i32 |
sfixed64 |
i64 |
bool |
bool |
string |
String |
bytes |
Vec<u8> |
All .proto enumeration types convert to the Rust i32 type. Additionally,
each enumeration type gets a corresponding Rust enum type. For example, this
proto enum:
enum PhoneType {
MOBILE = 0;
HOME = 1;
WORK = 2;
}gets this corresponding Rust enum 1:
pub enum PhoneType {
Mobile = 0,
Home = 1,
Work = 2,
}You can convert a PhoneType value to an i32 by doing:
PhoneType::Mobile as i32The #[derive(::prost::Enumeration)] annotation added to the generated
PhoneType adds these associated functions to the type:
impl PhoneType {
pub fn is_valid(value: i32) -> bool { ... }
#[deprecated]
pub fn from_i32(value: i32) -> Option<PhoneType> { ... }
}It also adds an impl TryFrom<i32> for PhoneType, so you can convert an i32 to its corresponding PhoneType value by doing,
for example:
let phone_type = 2i32;
match PhoneType::try_from(phone_type) {
Ok(PhoneType::Mobile) => ...,
Ok(PhoneType::Home) => ...,
Ok(PhoneType::Work) => ...,
Err(_) => ...,
}Additionally, wherever a proto enum is used as a field in a Message, the
message will have 'accessor' methods to get/set the value of the field as the
Rust enum type. For instance, this proto PhoneNumber message that has a field
named type of type PhoneType:
message PhoneNumber {
string number = 1;
PhoneType type = 2;
}will become the following Rust type 2 with methods type and set_type:
pub struct PhoneNumber {
pub number: String,
pub r#type: i32, // the `r#` is needed because `type` is a Rust keyword
}
impl PhoneNumber {
pub fn r#type(&self) -> PhoneType { ... }
pub fn set_type(&mut self, value: PhoneType) { ... }
}Note that the getter methods will return the Rust enum's default value if the
field has an invalid i32 value.
The enum type isn't used directly as a field, because the Protobuf spec
mandates that enumerations values are 'open', and decoding unrecognized
enumeration values must be possible.
Protobuf scalar value and enumeration message fields can have a modifier depending on the Protobuf version. Modifiers change the corresponding type of the Rust field:
.proto Version |
Modifier | Rust Type |
|---|---|---|
proto2 |
optional |
Option<T> |
proto2 |
required |
T |
proto3 |
default | T for scalar types, Option<T> otherwise |
proto3 |
optional |
Option<T> |
proto2/proto3 |
repeated |
Vec<T> |
Note that in proto3 the default representation for all user-defined message
types is Option<T>, and for scalar types just T (during decoding, a missing
value is populated by T::default()). If you need a witness of the presence of
a scalar type T, use the optional modifier to enforce an Option<T>
representation in the generated Rust struct.
Map fields are converted to a Rust HashMap with key and value type converted
from the Protobuf key and value types.
Message fields are converted to the corresponding struct type. The table of
field modifiers above applies to message fields, except that proto3 message
fields without a modifier (the default) will be wrapped in an Option.
Typically message fields are unboxed. prost will automatically box a message
field if the field type and the parent type are recursively nested in order to
avoid an infinite sized struct.
Oneof fields convert to a Rust enum. Protobuf oneofs types are not named, so
prost uses the name of the oneof field for the resulting Rust enum, and
defines the enum in a module under the struct. For example, a proto3 message
such as:
message Foo {
oneof widget {
int32 quux = 1;
string bar = 2;
}
}generates the following Rust3:
pub struct Foo {
pub widget: Option<foo::Widget>,
}
pub mod foo {
pub enum Widget {
Quux(i32),
Bar(String),
}
}oneof fields are always wrapped in an Option.
prost-build allows a custom code-generator to be used for processing service
definitions. This can be used to output Rust traits according to an
application's specific needs.
Example .proto file:
syntax = "proto3";
package tutorial;
message Person {
string name = 1;
int32 id = 2; // Unique ID number for this person.
string email = 3;
enum PhoneType {
MOBILE = 0;
HOME = 1;
WORK = 2;
}
message PhoneNumber {
string number = 1;
PhoneType type = 2;
}
repeated PhoneNumber phones = 4;
}
// Our address book file is just one of these.
message AddressBook {
repeated Person people = 1;
}and the generated Rust code (tutorial.rs):
#[derive(Clone, PartialEq, ::prost::Message)]
pub struct Person {
#[prost(string, tag="1")]
pub name: ::prost::alloc::string::String,
/// Unique ID number for this person.
#[prost(int32, tag="2")]
pub id: i32,
#[prost(string, tag="3")]
pub email: ::prost::alloc::string::String,
#[prost(message, repeated, tag="4")]
pub phones: ::prost::alloc::vec::Vec<person::PhoneNumber>,
}
/// Nested message and enum types in `Person`.
pub mod person {
#[derive(Clone, PartialEq, ::prost::Message)]
pub struct PhoneNumber {
#[prost(string, tag="1")]
pub number: ::prost::alloc::string::String,
#[prost(enumeration="PhoneType", tag="2")]
pub r#type: i32,
}
#[derive(Clone, Copy, Debug, PartialEq, Eq, Hash, PartialOrd, Ord, ::prost::Enumeration)]
#[repr(i32)]
pub enum PhoneType {
Mobile = 0,
Home = 1,
Work = 2,
}
}
/// Our address book file is just one of these.
#[derive(Clone, PartialEq, ::prost::Message)]
pub struct AddressBook {
#[prost(message, repeated, tag="1")]
pub people: ::prost::alloc::vec::Vec<Person>,
}The prost_build::Config::file_descriptor_set_path option can be used to emit a file descriptor set
during the build & code generation step. When used in conjunction with the std::include_bytes
macro and the prost_types::FileDescriptorSet type, applications and libraries using Prost can
implement introspection capabilities requiring details from the original .proto files.
prost is compatible with no_std crates. To enable no_std support, disable
the std features in prost and prost-types:
[dependencies]
prost = { version = "0.13.1", default-features = false, features = ["prost-derive"] }
# Only necessary if using Protobuf well-known types:
prost-types = { version = "0.13.1", default-features = false }Additionally, configure prost-build to output BTreeMaps instead of HashMaps
for all Protobuf map fields in your build.rs:
let mut config = prost_build::Config::new();
config.btree_map(&["."]);When using edition 2015, it may be necessary to add an extern crate core;
directive to the crate which includes prost-generated code.
prost uses a custom derive macro to handle encoding and decoding types, which
means that if your existing Rust type is compatible with Protobuf types, you can
serialize and deserialize it by adding the appropriate derive and field
annotations.
Currently the best documentation on adding annotations is to look at the generated code examples above.
Prost automatically infers tags for the struct.
Fields are tagged sequentially in the order they
are specified, starting with 1.
You may skip tags which have been reserved, or where there are gaps between
sequentially occurring tag values by specifying the tag number to skip to with
the tag attribute on the first field after the gap. The following fields will
be tagged sequentially starting from the next number.
use prost;
use prost::{Enumeration, Message};
#[derive(Clone, PartialEq, Message)]
struct Person {
#[prost(string, tag = "1")]
pub id: String, // tag=1
// NOTE: Old "name" field has been removed
// pub name: String, // tag=2 (Removed)
#[prost(string, tag = "6")]
pub given_name: String, // tag=6
#[prost(string)]
pub family_name: String, // tag=7
#[prost(string)]
pub formatted_name: String, // tag=8
#[prost(uint32, tag = "3")]
pub age: u32, // tag=3
#[prost(uint32)]
pub height: u32, // tag=4
#[prost(enumeration = "Gender")]
pub gender: i32, // tag=5
// NOTE: Skip to less commonly occurring fields
#[prost(string, tag = "16")]
pub name_prefix: String, // tag=16 (eg. mr/mrs/ms)
#[prost(string)]
pub name_suffix: String, // tag=17 (eg. jr/esq)
#[prost(string)]
pub maiden_name: String, // tag=18
}
#[derive(Clone, Copy, Debug, PartialEq, Eq, Enumeration)]
pub enum Gender {
Unknown = 0,
Female = 1,
Male = 2,
}The prost project maintains flakes support for local development. Once you have
nix and nix flakes setup you can just run nix develop to get a shell
configured with the required dependencies to compile the whole project.
std: Enable integration with standard library. Disable this feature forno_stdsupport. This feature is enabled by default.derive: Enable integration withprost-derive. Disable this feature to reduce compile times. This feature is enabled by default.prost-derive: Deprecated. Alias forderivefeature.no-recursion-limit: Disable the recursion limit. The recursion limit is 100 and cannot be customized.
- Could
prostbe implemented as a serializer for Serde?
Probably not, however I would like to hear from a Serde expert on the matter. There are two complications with trying to serialize Protobuf messages with Serde:
- Protobuf fields require a numbered tag, and currently there appears to be no
mechanism suitable for this in
serde. - The mapping of Protobuf type to Rust type is not 1-to-1. As a result,
trait-based approaches to dispatching don't work very well. Example: six
different Protobuf field types correspond to a Rust
Vec<i32>:repeated int32,repeated sint32,repeated sfixed32, and their packed counterparts.
But it is possible to place serde derive tags onto the generated types, so
the same structure can support both prost and Serde.
- I get errors when trying to run
cargo teston MacOS
If the errors are about missing autoreconf or similar, you can probably fix
them by running
brew install automake
brew install libtoolprost is distributed under the terms of the Apache License (Version 2.0).
See LICENSE for details.
Copyright 2022 Dan Burkert & Tokio Contributors