Question

I have created a .proto file and the ProtoBufTool successfully created .cs file. I am kinda new to csharp and I am trying to set the extension fields. But not sure how to do it? Does anybody have any examples how to use extensions using protobuf-net.

My .proto file:

package messages;
message DMsg 
{
    optional int32 msgtype = 1;
    extensions 100 to max;
}
extend DMsg
{
optional string fltColumns = 101;
}

Here is the class that got created:

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// 
//     This code was generated by a tool.
//
//     Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if
//     the code is regenerated.
// 
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Generated from: message.proto
namespace messages
{
[global::System.Serializable, global::ProtoBuf.ProtoContract(Name=@"DMsg")]
public partial class DMsg : global::ProtoBuf.IExtensible
{
  public DMsg() {}


private int _msgtype = default(int);
[global::ProtoBuf.ProtoMember(1, IsRequired = false, Name=@"msgtype", DataFormat = global::ProtoBuf.DataFormat.TwosComplement)][global::System.ComponentModel.DefaultValue(default(int))]
public int msgtype
{
  get { return _msgtype; }
  set { _msgtype = value; }
}
  private global::ProtoBuf.IExtension extensionObject;
  global::ProtoBuf.IExtension global::ProtoBuf.IExtensible.GetExtensionObject(bool createIfMissing)
    { return global::ProtoBuf.Extensible.GetExtensionObject(ref extensionObject, createIfMissing); }
}

}

Answer 1

protobuf-net doesn’t have brilliant support for extensions; you need to use the field numbers (I don’t think it does anything with fltColumns at the moment). However, to get values out you should be able to use Extensible.GetValue<T> / TryGetValue<T> (note to self: make those extension methods in C# 3.0). To set a value use AppendValue<T> – it can’t know whether this is a single-value or a list (repeated), so the same API handles both scenarios.

It is possible that Jon’s version (being much closer to the Java version) has better support here.

Example (I’m using hand-written classes for brevity, but it should work with generated types too):

    static void Main()
    {
        MyData data = new MyData();
        data.Id = 123;
        // something we know only by field id...
        Extensible.AppendValue<string>(data, 27, "my name");
        string myName = Extensible.GetValue<string>(data, 27);

        // this should be OK too (i.e. if we loaded it into something that
        // *did* understand that 27 means Name)
        MyKnownData known = Serializer.ChangeType<MyData, MyKnownData>(data);
        Console.WriteLine(known.Id);
        Console.WriteLine(known.Name);
    }

    [ProtoContract]
    class MyData : Extensible
    {
        [ProtoMember(1)]
        public int Id { get; set; }
    }

    [ProtoContract]
    class MyKnownData
    {
        [ProtoMember(1)]
        public int Id { get; set; }
        [ProtoMember(27)]
        public string Name{ get; set; }
    }