Convert Longs to strings and ByteBuffers to Buffers

[seishun]

My library passes decoded protobuf messages directly to users. Since I don't want to tie the library to Long.js and ByteBuffer.js, I run all objects through a function that converts any Long objects to strings and any ByteBuffer objects to Buffers. It gets a bit messy when there are nested messages.

Do you think adding options to convert Longs to strings and/or ByteBuffers to Buffers on decode would be a meaningful addition to ProtoBuf.js?

[dcodeIO]

Message#toRaw(false, true) should do that for you (see)

[seishun]

Cool, that works. I think the description of that method could be a bit clearer, though. It's not obvious what "raw payload" means.

Is there perhaps also a way to remove all the null fields? Removing also fields with a default value that haven't been set would be even better, but I understand it's work-in-progress (#200).

[zhiqingchen]

Customize your toRaw method

function toRaw(obj) {
    var clone = {};
    for (var i in obj) {
        if (obj.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
            if (obj[i] === null) {

            } else if (typeof obj[i] !== 'object') {
                clone[i] = obj[i];
            } else if (ProtoBuf.ByteBuffer.isByteBuffer(obj[i])) {
                clone[i] = obj[i].toHex();
            } else if (ProtoBuf.Long.isLong(obj[i])) {
                clone[i] = obj[i].toString();
            } else {
                clone[i] = cloneRaw(obj[i]);
            }
        }
    }
    return clone;
}

[englercj]

obj[i] instanceof ProtoBuf.ByteBuffer

Don't do that, use ByteBuffer.isByteBuffer()

[zhiqingchen]

@englercj

ByteBuffer.isByteBuffer = function(bb) {
     return (bb && bb instanceof ByteBuffer) === true;
};

I don't understand, they look the same

[englercj]

@zhiqingchen You are using/looking at an old version of ByteBuffer. This is the latest version of that method:

https://github.com/dcodeIO/ByteBuffer.js/blob/master/src/methods/static/isByteBuffer.js

See this issue for more info: protobufjs/bytebuffer.js#52

[zhiqingchen]

@englercj
get it, thanks.

[dcodeIO]

Closing this for now.

protobuf.js 6.0.0

Feel free to send a pull request if this is still a requirement.