Writing Schemas and Generating Code

Code Generation

Cap'n Proto works by generating code. First, you create a schema using Cap'n Proto's interface-definition language (IDL). Then, you feed this schema into the Cap'n Proto compiler, which generates the corresponding code in your native language.

There is support for other languages, too.

Before you Begin

Ensure that you have installed the capnp compiler and the Go language plugin, and that your shell's $PATH variable includes $GOPATH/bin.

Refer to the previous section for instructions.

Example Schema File

Consider the following schema, stored in foo/books.capnp:

using Go = import "/go.capnp";
@0x85d3acc39d94e0f8;
$Go.package("books");
$Go.import("foo/books");

struct Book {
    title @0 :Text;
    # Title of the book.

    pageCount @1 :Int32;
    # Number of pages in the book.
}

capnpc-go requires that two annotations be present in your schema:

1. $Go.package("books"): tells the compiler to place package books at the top of the generated Go files.
2. $Go.import("foo/books"): declares the full import path within your project. The compiler uses this to generate the import statement in the auto-generated code, when one of your schemas imports a type from another.

Compilation will fail unless these annotations are present.

Compiling the Schema

To compile this schema into Go code, run the following command. Note that the source path /foo/books.capnp must correspond to the import path declared in your annotations.

capnp compile -I$GOPATH/src/capnproto.org/go/capnp/std -ogo foo/books.capnp

Tip 👉 For more compilation options, see capnp compile --help.

This will output the foo/books.capnp.go file, containing Go structs that can be imported into your programs. These are ordinary Go types that represent the schema you declared in books.capnp. Each has accessor methods corresponding to the fields declared in the schema. For example, the Book struct will have the methods Title() (string, error) and SetTitle(string) error.

In the next section, we will show how you can write these structs to a file or transmit them over the network.

Next

Now that you have generated code from your schema, you should learn how to work with Cap'n Proto types.