Question

I have an issue with storing Protobuf data to disk.
The application i have uses Protocol Buffer to transfer data over a socket (which works fine), but when i try to store the data to disk it fails.
Actually, saving data reports no issues, but i cannot seem to load them again properly.
Any tips would be gladly appreciated.

void writeToDisk(DataList & dList)
{
    // open streams
    int fd = open("serializedMessage.pb", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT);
    google::protobuf::io::ZeroCopyOutputStream* fileOutput = new google::protobuf::io::FileOutputStream(fd);
    google::protobuf::io::CodedOutputStream* codedOutput = new google::protobuf::io::CodedOutputStream(fileOutput);

    // save data
    codedOutput->WriteLittleEndian32(PROTOBUF_MESSAGE_ID_NUMBER); // store with message id
    codedOutput->WriteLittleEndian32(dList.ByteSize()); // the size of the data i will serialize
    dList.SerializeToCodedStream(codedOutput); // serialize the data

    // close streams
    delete codedOutput;
    delete fileOutput;

    close(fd);
}

I’ve verified the data inside this function, the dList contains the data i expect. The streams report that no errors occur, and that a reasonable amount of bytes were written to disk. (also the file is of reasonable size)
But when i try to read back the data, it does not work. Moreover, what is really strange, is that if i append more data to this file, i can read the first messages (but not the one at the end).

void readDataFromFile()
{   
    // open streams
    int fd = open("serializedMessage.pb", O_RDONLY);
    google::protobuf::io::ZeroCopyInputStream* fileinput = new google::protobuf::io::FileInputStream(fd);
    google::protobuf::io::CodedInputStream* codedinput = new google::protobuf::io::CodedInputStream(fileinput);

    // read back
    uint32_t sizeToRead = 0, magicNumber = 0;
    string parsedStr = "";

    codedinput->ReadLittleEndian32(&magicNumber); // the message id-number i expect
    codedinput->ReadLittleEndian32(&sizeToRead); // the reported data size, also what i expect
    codedinput->ReadString(&parsedstr, sizeToRead)) // the size() of 'parsedstr' is much less than it should (sizeToRead)

    DataList dl = DataList();

    if (dl.ParseFromString(parsedstr)) // fails
    {
        // work with data if all okay
    }

    // close streams
    delete codedinput;
    delete fileinput;
    close(fd);
}

Obviously i have omitted some of the code here to simplify everything.
As a side note i have also also tried to serialize the message to a string & save that string via CodedOutputStream. This does not work either. I have verified the contents of that string though, so i guess culprit must be the stream functions.

This is a windows environment, c++ with protocol buffers and Qt.

Thank you for your time!

Answer 1

I solved this issue by switching from file descriptors to fstream, and FileCopyStream to OstreamOutputStream.

Although i’ve seen examples using the former, it didn’t work for me.

I found a nice code example in hidden in the google coded_stream header. link #1

Also, since i needed to serialize multiple messages to the same file using protocol buffers, this link was enlightening. link #2

For some reason, the output file is not ‘complete’ until i actually desctruct the stream objects.