lwpb
The "Lightweight Protocol Buffer Library" provides fast encoding and decoding of Google Protocol Buffers in C and Python.
Some distinctive things about lwpb:
-
lwpb does not require a codegen step.
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lwpb does not force OO on the programmer. Encoding and decoding works with dicts in Python, and plain old structures in C.
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lwpb is fast and small. The C library is 31kb stripped. The Python module is mostly written in C and performs well in benchmarks.
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lwpb does not depend on Google's C++ API or anything outside the Python standard libraries.
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lwpb supports most features of the protocol buffer serialization format -- probably, all the ones you care about. :)
Python library
Quick Python synopsis:
from lwpb.codec import MessageCodec
codec = MessageCodec( pb2file='person.pb2', typename='example.Person' )
serialized = codec.encode( { 'name': 'John Doe', 'id': 1234 } )
deserialized = codec.decode( serialized )
print deserialized
This expects a compiled .proto file you can generate with:
protoc person.proto -o person.pb2
To build the Python module, first compile the C library (see below), then:
cd python
./build_inplace
python setup.py test
python setup.py build
python setup.py install
For Debian and Ubuntu users:
cd python
debian/rules binary
dpkg -i ../*.deb
C library
The C library was originally released by Simon Kallweit. More documentation on the C API can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/lwpb/
To compile:
make
To test it:
make check
Performance
From a recent benchmark which included the lwpb Python module (lower times are better):
JSON
3.56521892548
SimpleJSON
0.727998971939
Protocol Buffer (fast)
0.38397192955
Protocol Buffer (standard)
4.86640501022
Protocol Buffer (lwpb)
0.323328971863
cPickle
0.811990976334
Completeness
Supported types:
- INT32
- UINT32
- INT64
- UINT64
- FIXED32
- FIXED64
- SFIXED32
- SFIXED64
- DOUBLE
- FLOAT
- BOOL
- STRING
- MESSAGE
- BYTES
- ENUM
That is to say, everything but GROUP, which Google has deprecated.
Supported options:
- packed repeated fields
Supported by the C library, but not by the Python library:
- services
- RPC
Not supported:
- extensions