protobuf_encoding

README

Protobuf encoding example

For this example we already generated the Go file from the .proto file, so you can run it with go run ..

Generate Go files

If you want to do the generation yourself, you have to:

1. Install protoc: https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf#protobuf-compiler-installation
   • We tested with v25.0
2. Install the Go protocol buffers plugin: go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@latest
   • We tested with v1.31.0
3. Generate Go files from .proto files: protoc --go_out=./tutorialpb --go_opt=paths=source_relative ./addressbook.proto

For a complete official protobuf tutorial see https://protobuf.dev/getting-started/gotutorial/.

Inspect the raw bytes

If you want to see how the stored value looks like, in its raw, encoded form, you can add the following at the end of the main function:

// Just to demonstrate the raw encoded value, we can print the raw bytes as string
// using reflection to access the unexported field.
reflectedField := reflect.ValueOf(&store).Elem().FieldByName("m")
reflectedField = reflect.NewAt(reflectedField.Type(), unsafe.Pointer(reflectedField.UnsafeAddr())).Elem()
m := reflectedField.Interface().(map[string][]byte)
rawVal := m["foo123"]
fmt.Printf("Raw value: %s\n", rawVal)
// Prints:
// Raw value:
// John Doe����johndoe@example.com"
//
// 0123-456789"
//
// 0987-654321*
//            󟛪����

The reflection usage is only required because the example uses the gomap in-memory store. If it was using Redis or another remote store, you could just create a plain (non-gokv) client and retrieve the value with that. It would lead to the same result.