v2.0.0

What's new in version 2

To support Protobuf editions, we have to make breaking changes that also affect users of proto2 and proto3. This prompted us to make more extensive changes that take feedback from version 1 into account:

We no longer use classes. Instead, we generate a schema object and a type for every message. To create a new instance, to serialize, and for other concerns, we provide functions. Here is a simple example:

import { create, toBinary } from "@bufbuild/protobuf";
import { UserSchema } from "./gen/example_pb";

let user = create(UserSchema, {
  firstName: "Homer",
  lastName: "Simpson",
  active: true,
});

const bytes = toBinary(UserSchema, user);

If you use proto3, messages are now plain objects. Files with proto2 and editions use the prototype chain to track field presence.

This approach solves several outstanding issues, such as:

• #397 Provide custom options at runtime
• #551 Generated types allow assigning wrong message type if it is a superset of the target type
• #414 Improvements for proto2 required
• #738 type-save full enum value names
• #928 Better interop with 3rd party frameworks requiring plain objects
• #508 JSON types

Tip

Take a look at the upgrade guide to learn more.

Note

Connect-ES does not support version 2 yet. We will update it shortly.

Contributors

Thanks to @srikrsna-buf for his contributions to v2!