ProtoCache Go

Alternative flat binary format for Protobuf schema. It' works like FlatBuffers, but it's usually smaller and surpports map. Flat means no deserialization overhead. A benchmark shows the Protobuf has considerable deserialization overhead and significant reflection overhead. FlatBuffers is fast but wastes space. ProtoCache takes balance of data size and read speed, so it's useful in data caching.

	Protobuf	vtprotobuf	ProtoCache	FlatBuffers
Data Size	574B	574B	780B	1296B
Compressed Size	566B	566B	571B	856B
Decompress	434ns	434ns	820ns	1634ns
Decode + Traverse	5998ns	3359ns	586ns	1129ns
Decode + Traverse(reflection)	12480ns	10294ns	1260ns	No Go API

See detail in C++ version.

Code Gen

protoc --pcgo_out=. test.proto

A protobuf compiler plugin called protoc-gen-pcgo is available to generate Go file.

Basic APIs

raw, err := protocache.Serialize(pbMessage)
assert(t, err == nil)

root := pc.AS_Main(raw)
assert(t, root.IsValid())

Serializing a protobuf message with protocache.Serialize is the only way to create protocache binary at present. It's easy to access by wrapping the data with generated code.

Reflection

std::string err;
raw, err := os.ReadFile("test.proto")
assert(t, err == nil)

proto, err := compiler.ParseProto(raw) //CGO
assert(t, err == nil)

var pool reflect.DescriptorPool
assert(t, pool.Register(proto))

root := pool.Find("test.Main")
assert(t, root != nil)

field := root.Lookup("f64")
assert(t, field != nil)

The reflection apis are simliar to C++ version. An example can be found in the test. CGO is needed to parse schema.