Java: JSON -> Protobuf & back conversion

As mentioned in an answer to a similar question, since v3.1.0 this is a supported feature of ProtocolBuffers. For Java, include the extension module com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java-util and use JsonFormat like so:

JsonFormat.parser().ignoringUnknownFields().merge(json, yourObjectBuilder);YourObject value = yourObjectBuilder.build();

We are currently using protobuf-java-format to convert our Protobuf messages (anything subclass of Message) into a JSON format to send over our web API.

Simply do:

  JsonFormat.printToString(protoMessage)

I don't much like an idea of writing binary protobuf to database, because it can one day become not backward-compatible with newer versions and break the system that way.

Converting protobuf to JSON for storage and then back to protobuf on load is much more likely to create compatibility problems, because:

• If the process which performs the conversion is not built with the latest version of the protobuf schema, then converting will silently drop any fields that the process doesn't know about. This is true both of the storing and loading ends.
• Even with the most recent schema available, JSON <-> Protobuf conversion may be lossy in the presence of imprecise floating-point values and similar corner cases.
• Protobufs actually have (slightly) stronger backwards-compatibility guarantees than JSON. Like with JSON, if you add a new field, old clients will ignore it. Unlike with JSON, Protobufs allow declaring a default value, which can make it somewhat easier for new clients to deal with old data that is otherwise missing the field. This is only a slight advantage, but otherwise Protobuf and JSON have equivalent backwards-compatibility properties, therefore you are not gaining any backwards-compatibility advantages from storing in JSON.

With all that said, there are many libraries out there for converting protobufs to JSON, usually built on the Protobuf reflection interface (not to be confused with the Java reflection interface; Protobuf reflection is offered by the com.google.protobuf.Message interface).