On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 16:10, maninder batth <[email protected]> wrote: > I disagree. You could encode field name in the binary. Then at de- > serialization, you can read the field descriptor and reconstruct the > field. There is absolutely no need for tags. They are indeed > cumbersome.
If you include the field name, then your throw out part of the advantages of protocol buffers out of the window: speed and compact binary encoding. > > On Oct 22, 6:02 pm, Henner Zeller <[email protected]> > wrote: >> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 15:01, Paul <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Hi, >> >> > This may seem like a basic question, but I find having to label >> > the .proto file with unique tag numbers for each field a little >> > cumbersome, especially if there are a lot of fields. >> >> > message Person { >> > required string name = 1; >> > required int32 id = 2; >> > optional string email = 3; >> > } >> >> > Can I define a .proto file without the tag numbers, like so? >> >> > message Person { >> > required string name; >> > required int32 id; >> > optional string email; >> > } >> >> No. >> >> The reason for this explicit definition is that the protocol buffer is >> 'future compatible': fields written with a particular tag will always >> be written with that tag. Consider you want to re-structure the fields >> in your proto buffer to say (Id, name, email) ... then they would get >> a different 'automatic' tag assigned and you wouldn't be able to read >> files written with older binaries. If the tags are assigned, then >> re-arranging fields in the file does not matter. >> >> -h >> >> >> >> >> >> > Thanks, >> > Paul >> >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> > "Protocol Buffers" group. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> > [email protected]. >> > For more options, visit this group >> > athttp://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Protocol Buffers" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Protocol Buffers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/protobuf?hl=en.
