This project aims to provide an implementation of Google's protocol buffers for smart contracts written in Solidity, targeting Ethereum-based blockchains.
In effect, this tool extends Solidity to allow the use of structs as arguments and return values for external functions.
The protocol buffers specification consists of a simple schema notation for messages containing structured data, and a compact binary encoding scheme for efficient and language-neutral transmission of message data.
In a typical use case, message schemas (usually in the form of .proto files)
are compiled by a build-time tool in order to generate code (e.g. class files)
in the target language, implementing the message format with native data types
and structures and providing methods for serialising and deserialising binary-
formatted messages. Many implementations involve a run-time library component
in addition to the generated code.
solpb is a command-line program for generating Solidity code from .proto
files. One "codec" is generated per message type as separate libraries, each
of which contains the message type definition as a struct, and a decode
function which takes a bytes array and returns the decoded struct.
So far, most of version 2.0 of the specification is in a working state.
Mac users can install the latest stable version of the solpb via homebrew:
brew install CBAInnovationLab/tap/solpbDebian-based linux distributions such as Ubuntu can use the deb package:
wget https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/protobuf-solidity/packages/debian/solpb-0.5.0-linux-x86_64.deb
dpkg -i solpb-0.5.0-linux-x86_64.debOther users may install from the latest binary tarball:
wget https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/protobuf-solidity/packages/tarball/solpb-0.5.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xvf solpb-0.5.0-linux.tar.gz
cd solpb-0.1.0
./install.shAlternatively, you may always build from source (requires Stack):
git clone https://github.com/CBAInnovationLab/protobuf-solidity.git
cd protobuf-solidity
stack setup
stack build