protobufs.pl -- Google's Protocol Buffers

Protocol buffers are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data -- think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler. You define how you want your data to be structured once. This takes the form of a template that describes the data structure. You use this template to encode and decode your data structure into wire-streams that may be sent-to or read-from your peers. The underlying wire stream is platform independent, lossless, and may be used to interwork with a variety of languages and systems regardless of word size or endianness. Techniques exist to safely extend your data structure without breaking deployed programs that are compiled against the "old" format.

The idea behind Google's Protocol Buffers is that you define your structured messages using a domain-specific language and tool set. In SWI-Prolog, you define your message template as a list of predefined Prolog terms that correspond to production rules in the Definite Clause Grammar (DCG) that realizes the interpreter. Each production rule has an equivalent rule in the protobuf grammar. The process is not unlike specifiying the format of a regular expression. To encode a template to a wire-stream, you pass a grounded template, X, and variable, Y, to protobuf_message/2. To decode a wire-stream, Y, you pass an ungrounded template, X, along with a grounded wire-stream, Y, to protobuf_message/2. The interpreter will unify the unbound variables in the template with values decoded from the wire-stream.

For an overview and tutorial with examples, see protobufs_overview.txt. Examples of usage may also be found by inspecting test_protobufs.pl.

author

- : Jeffrey Rosenwald (JeffRose@acm.org)

See also

- http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers

Compatibility

- : SWI-Prolog

 protobuf_message(?Template, ?Wire_stream) is semidet

 protobuf_message(?Template, ?Wire_stream, ?Rest) is nondet

Marshalls and unmarshalls byte streams encoded using Google's Protobuf grammars. protobuf_message/2 provides a bi-directional parser that marshalls a Prolog structure to Wire_stream, according to rules specified by Template. It can also unmarshall Wire_stream into a Prolog structure according to the same grammar. protobuf_message/3 provides a difference list version.

Arguments:

Template	- is a protobuf grammar specification. On decode, unbound variables in the Template are unified with their respective values in the Wire_stream. On encode, Template must be ground.
Wire_stream	- is a code list that was generated by a protobuf encoder using an equivalent template.

Undocumented predicates

The following predicates are exported, but not or incorrectly documented.

 protobuf_message(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)