Protocol Buffers for Objective-C

An implementation of Protocol Buffers in Objective C.

Protocol Buffers are a way of encoding structured data in an efficient yet extensible format. This project is based on an implementation of Protocol Buffers from Google. See the Google protobuf project for more information.

This fork contains only ARC version of library.

How To Install Protobuf

Building the Objective-C Protobuf compiler

1. Check if you have Homebrew brew -v
2. If you don't already have Homebrew, then install it ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
3. Install the main Protobuf compiler and required tools brew install automake brew install libtool brew install protobuf
4. (optional) Create a symlink to your Protobuf compiler. ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/protobuf/2.6.1/bin/protoc /usr/local/bin
5. Clone this repository. git clone https://github.com/alexeyxo/protobuf-objc.git
6. Build it! ./scripts/build.sh

Adding to your project as a sub project

...

7. Add /src/runtime/ProtocolBuffers.xcodeproj in your project.

Adding to your project as a CocoaPod

...

7. cd <your .xcodeproj directory>

8. echo -e "platform :ios , 6.0 \nlink_with '<YourAppTarget>', '<YourAppTarget_Test>' \npod 'ProtocolBuffers'" > Podfile

9. pod install

Compile ".proto" files.

protoc --plugin=/usr/local/bin/protoc-gen-objc person.proto --objc_out="./"

Compilation Options

The protobuf-objc compiler recognizes several obj-c specific compilation options. These are added to the beginning of your .proto file:

    package dataexchange;

    import "objectivec-descriptor.proto";
    option (google.protobuf.objectivec_file_options).package = "DataExchange";
    option (google.protobuf.objectivec_file_options).class_prefix = "DE";
    option (google.protobuf.objectivec_file_options).relax_camel_case = true;
    .
    .
    .

Options

package

Sets the Objective-C package where classes generated from this .proto will be placed. This is typically used since Objective-C libraries output all their headers into a single directory. i.e. Foundation/* AddressBook/* UIKit/* etc. etc.

class_prefix

The string to be prefixed in front of all classes in order to make them 'cocoa-y'. i.e. 'NS/AB/CF/PB' for the NextStep/AddressBook/CoreFoundation/ProtocolBuffer libraries respectively. This will commonly be the capitalized letters from the above defined package directory.

relax_camel_case

Values: true/false.

Relaxes the strict camel case that is the default.

When this option is set, only the first letter after an underscore is forced to uppercase. I added this feature so that the generated obj-c code could more closely match our own in-house camel casing style.

Example:

    enum Gender {
      GUnknown  = 0;
      GFemale   = 1;
      GMale     = 2;
      GOther    = 3;
    }

    enum PlatformType {
      PTUnknown   = 0;
      PTiOS       = 1;
      PTAndroid   = 2;
      PTWeb       = 3;
    }

Normal output:

    typedef NS_ENUM(SInt32, HMGender) {
      HMGenderGunknown = 0,
      HMGenderGfemale = 1,
      HMGenderGmale = 2,
      HMGenderGother = 3,
    };

    typedef NS_ENUM(SInt32, HMPlatformType) {
      HMPlatformTypePtunknown = 0,
      HMPlatformTypePtiOs = 1,
      HMPlatformTypePtandroid = 2,
      HMPlatformTypePtweb = 3,
    };

Relaxed camel case:

    typedef NS_ENUM(SInt32, HMGender) {
      HMGenderGUnknown = 0,
      HMGenderGFemale = 1,
      HMGenderGMale = 2,
      HMGenderGOther = 3,
    };

    typedef NS_ENUM(SInt32, HMPlatformType) {
      HMPlatformTypePTUnknown = 0,
      HMPlatformTypePTiOS = 1,
      HMPlatformTypePTAndroid = 2,
      HMPlatformTypePTWeb = 3,
    };

Protobuf Examples

Web

Server-side requires Ruby(2.0+) and Sinatra gem.

To start ruby sinatra.rb in /Example/Web

if you need to recompile ruby proto models please install ruby_protobuf gem and make 'rprotoc person.proto'

iOS Example

/Example/iOS/Proto.xcodeproj

Project contains protobuf example and small json comparison.

Credits

Maintainer - Alexey Khokhlov

Booyah Inc. - Jon Parise

Google Protocol Buffers, Objective C - Cyrus Najmabadi - Sergey Martynov

Google Protocol Buffers - Kenton Varda, Sanjay Ghemawat, Jeff Dean, and others