On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 16:11, Henner Zeller
<henner.zel...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 16:10, maninder batth <batth.manin...@gmail.com>
> 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.
.. and you would never be able to rename fields either.
>
>>
>> On Oct 22, 6:02 pm, Henner Zeller <henner.zel...@googlemail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 15:01, Paul <mjpabl...@gmail.com> 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
>>>
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>>
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