Comment #5 on issue 249 by [email protected]: Default values are not
assumed to be filled in.
http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/issues/detail?id=249
It sounds like there is still some confusion over the meaning of "set."
It is always legal to access a field from a protobuf, whether it is
explicitly set or not. Using a default value with option, it is true that
no information would be "set" by default, but I don't think you care: the
default value provides a way of specifying what value is returned when the
value is not explicitly set.
e.g.:
message MyProto {
optional string foo = 1 [ default = "some value" ];
}
MyProto bar;
assert(!bar.has_foo());
assert(bar.foo() == "some value");
The above assertions succeed. The value foo is not explicitly set but
accessing the field returns the default. This sounds like what you want.
If you change the field to required, then that means when serializing and
parsing messages, that field must be explicitly set. It sounds like the
data validation you have depends on the use-case - you should really do
such validation at the application level, rather than using the required
mechanism. In fact, many people (myself included) advocate not using
required at all.
If you want to continue this discussion let's do so on the groups mailing
list: [email protected]
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