Question

Is there a way to do protocol buffers in JavaScript?

Why for .js?

If you think about sciencey requirements for a moment, situations pop up where you might want to send a large block of data to the client. With CRUD-style it doesn’t really matter so much what you use. With sciencey stuff it does matter (at least I think it does).

tradeoffs:

• protobuffs balances compactness, serialize and deserialize speeds well.

• text based protocols (xml / json) have a larger message size… but with javascript I wonder which is more effective.

reference:

• code.google.com/p/protobuf-plugin-closure

• Google Protocol Buffers or something similar for .net/javascript

• https://github.com/sirikata/protojs

• Google Protocol Buffers – JavaScript

• http://www.vitaliykulikov.com/2011/02/gwt-friendly-protocol-buffers.html

• http://benhakala.blogspot.com/2010/05/converting-google-protocol-buffers-to.html (alludes to google maps possibly using protobufs)

Additional references provided by community (see below for more context):

• https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js

• http://blog.ltgt.net/exploring-using-protobuf-in-the-browser/

• http://blog.ltgt.net/using-protobuf-client-side-with-gwt

• http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-gwt/

Answer 1

I have been looking for protobuf for javascript. There is a project here:
https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js