“A man got to have a code!” - Omar Little

See the project website for documentation and APIs.

As our teams and programs grow, the variety and volume of data also grows. Success will turn your simple data models into complex ones! Whether your application is storing data to disk or transmitting it over a network, the structure and interpretation of that data should be clear. Consumers work best with data they understand!

Schemas describe and document data models. If you have data, you should have a schema.

Google's Protocol Buffers are built around a great schema language:

• It's cross platform and language independent. Whatever programming language you use, you'll be able to use proto schemas with your application.

• Proto schemas are backwards-compatible and future-proof. You can evolve your schema as your application loses old features and gains new ones.

• It's focused. Proto schemas describe your data models. That's it.

Here's a sample message definition:

syntax = "proto3";

package squareup.dinosaurs;

option java_package = "com.squareup.dinosaurs";

import "squareup/geology/period.proto";

message Dinosaur {
  // Common name of this dinosaur, like "Stegosaurus".
  string name = 1;

  // URLs with images of this dinosaur.
  repeated string picture_urls = 2;

  squareup.geology.Period period = 5;
}

And here's an enum definition:

syntax = "proto3";

package squareup.geology;

option java_package = "com.squareup.geology";

enum Period {
  // 145.5 million years ago — 66.0 million years ago.
  CRETACEOUS = 0;

  // 201.3 million years ago — 145.0 million years ago.
  JURASSIC = 1;

  // 252.17 million years ago — 201.3 million years ago.
  TRIASSIC = 2;
}

This schema language is Protocol Buffers' best feature. You might even use it purely for documentation purposes, such as to describe a JSON API.

Protocol Buffers also defines a compact binary encoding of messages that conform to the schema. This encoding is fast to encode, fast to decode, small to transmit, and small to store. The binary encoding uses numeric tags from the schema, like the 5 for period above.

For example, let's encode this dinosaur:

{
  name: "Stegosaurus",
  period: JURASSIC
}

The encoded value is just 15 bytes:

Hex  Description
 0a  tag: name(1), field encoding: LENGTH_DELIMITED(2). 1 << 3 | 2
 0b  "Stegosaurus".length()
 53  'S'
 74  't'
 65  'e'
 67  'g'
 6f  'o'
 73  's'
 61  'a'
 75  'u'
 72  'r'
 75  'u'
 73  's'
 28  tag: period(5), field encoding: VARINT(0). 5 << 3 | 0
 02  JURASSIC(2)

The Protocol Buffers schema language and binary encoding are both defined by Google. Wire is an independent implementation from Square that's specifically designed for Android and Java.

For each message type defined in the schema, Wire generates an immutable model class and its builder. The generated code looks like code you'd write by hand: it's documented, formatted, and simple. Wire's APIs should feel at home to programmers who like Effective Java.

That said, there are some interesting design decisions in Wire:

• Wire messages declare public final fields instead of the usual getter methods. This cuts down on both code generated and code executed. Less code is particularly beneficial for Android programs.

• Wire avoids case mapping. A field declared as picture_urls in a schema yields a Java field picture_urls and not the conventional pictureUrls camel case. Though the name feels awkward at first, it's fantastic whenever you use grep or more sophisticated search tools. No more mapping when navigating between schema, Java source code, and data. It also provides a gentle reminder to calling code that proto messages are a bit special.

• Primitive types are always boxed. If a field is absent, its value is null. This is used for naturally optional fields, such as a dinosaur whose period is unknown. A field may also be null due to schema evolution: if tomorrow we add a carnivore boolean to our message definition, today's data won’t have a value for that field.

Here's the compact generated code for the Dinosaur message defined above:

// Code generated by Wire protocol buffer compiler, do not edit.
// Source: squareup.dinosaurs.Dinosaur in squareup/dinosaurs/dinosaur.proto
package com.squareup.dinosaurs;

import com.squareup.geology.Period;
import com.squareup.wire.Message;
import com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter;
import com.squareup.wire.Syntax;
import com.squareup.wire.WireField;
import com.squareup.wire.internal.Internal;
import java.lang.Object;
import java.lang.Override;
import java.lang.String;
import java.util.List;
import okio.ByteString;

public final class Dinosaur extends Message<Dinosaur, Dinosaur.Builder> {
  public static final ProtoAdapter<Dinosaur> ADAPTER = ProtoAdapter.newMessageAdapter(Dinosaur.class, "type.googleapis.com/squareup.dinosaurs.Dinosaur", Syntax.PROTO_3);

  private static final long serialVersionUID = 0L;

  /**
   * Common name of this dinosaur, like "Stegosaurus".
   */
  @WireField(
      tag = 1,
      adapter = "com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter#STRING",
      label = WireField.Label.OMIT_IDENTITY
  )
  public final String name;

  /**
   * URLs with images of this dinosaur.
   */
  @WireField(
      tag = 2,
      adapter = "com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter#STRING",
      label = WireField.Label.REPEATED,
      jsonName = "pictureUrls"
  )
  public final List<String> picture_urls;

  @WireField(
      tag = 5,
      adapter = "com.squareup.geology.Period#ADAPTER",
      label = WireField.Label.OMIT_IDENTITY
  )
  public final Period period;

  public Dinosaur(String name, List<String> picture_urls, Period period) {
    this(name, picture_urls, period, ByteString.EMPTY);
  }

  public Dinosaur(String name, List<String> picture_urls, Period period, ByteString unknownFields) {
    super(ADAPTER, unknownFields);
    if (name == null) {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("name == null");
    }
    this.name = name;
    this.picture_urls = Internal.immutableCopyOf("picture_urls", picture_urls);
    if (period == null) {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("period == null");
    }
    this.period = period;
  }

  @Override
  public Builder newBuilder() {
    Builder builder = new Builder();
    builder.name = name;
    builder.picture_urls = Internal.copyOf(picture_urls);
    builder.period = period;
    builder.addUnknownFields(unknownFields());
    return builder;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(Object other) {
    if (other == this) return true;
    if (!(other instanceof Dinosaur)) return false;
    Dinosaur o = (Dinosaur) other;
    return unknownFields().equals(o.unknownFields())
        && Internal.equals(name, o.name)
        && picture_urls.equals(o.picture_urls)
        && Internal.equals(period, o.period);
  }

  @Override
  public int hashCode() {
    int result = super.hashCode;
    if (result == 0) {
      result = unknownFields().hashCode();
      result = result * 37 + (name != null ? name.hashCode() : 0);
      result = result * 37 + picture_urls.hashCode();
      result = result * 37 + (period != null ? period.hashCode() : 0);
      super.hashCode = result;
    }
    return result;
  }

  public static final class Builder extends Message.Builder<Dinosaur, Builder> {
    public String name;

    public List<String> picture_urls;

    public Period period;

    public Builder() {
      name = "";
      picture_urls = Internal.newMutableList();
      period = Period.CRETACEOUS;
    }

    /**
     * Common name of this dinosaur, like "Stegosaurus".
     */
    public Builder name(String name) {
      this.name = name;
      return this;
    }

    /**
     * URLs with images of this dinosaur.
     */
    public Builder picture_urls(List<String> picture_urls) {
      Internal.checkElementsNotNull(picture_urls);
      this.picture_urls = picture_urls;
      return this;
    }

    public Builder period(Period period) {
      this.period = period;
      return this;
    }

    @Override
    public Dinosaur build() {
      return new Dinosaur(name, picture_urls, period, super.buildUnknownFields());
    }
  }
}

The Java code to create and access proto models is compact and readable:

Dinosaur stegosaurus = new Dinosaur.Builder()
    .name("Stegosaurus")
    .period(Period.JURASSIC)
    .build();

System.out.println("My favorite dinosaur existed in the " + stegosaurus.period + " period.");

Each type has a corresponding ProtoAdapter that can encode a message to bytes and decode bytes back into a message.

Dinosaur stegosaurus = ...
byte[] stegosaurusBytes = Dinosaur.ADAPTER.encode(stegosaurus);

byte[] tyrannosaurusBytes = ...
Dinosaur tyrannosaurus = Dinosaur.ADAPTER.decode(tyrannosaurusBytes);

When accessing a field, use Wire.get() to replace null values with the corresponding default:

Period period = Wire.get(stegosaurus.period, Dinosaur.DEFAULT_PERIOD);

This is equivalent to the following:

Period period = stegosaurus.period != null ? stegosaurus.period : Dinosaur.DEFAULT_PERIOD;

Since version 3.0.0, Wire can generate Kotlin code. See Wire Compiler & Gradle Plugin to learn how to configure your build.

Kotlin is a pragmatic and expressive programming language that makes it easy to model data. Here's how we used Kotlin to model Protocol Buffers messages:

• Messages feel like data classes, but in fact they're not. Compiler still generates equals(), hashCode(), toString() and copy() for you. Wire does not generate componentN() functions though, we believe that destructuring declarations are not a good fit for Protocol Buffers: a change in the schema that removes or adds a field might lead to a situation when your destructuring declaration still compiles but now describes a completely different subset of fields, rendering your code incorrect.

• copy() is a substitute for the Builder, which is not used anymore. If your program relies on the Builder to be present, you may generate code in Java interoperability mode - Wire Compiler & Gradle Plugin explains how that works.

• Fields are generated as properties. While this is idiomatic in Kotlin, Java code will now have to access fields using getters. If your program relies on accessing fields directly, use Java interoperability mode - the compiler will generate @JvmField annotations for each field.

• The nullability of each field's type depends on its label: required, repeated and map fields get non-nullable types, whereas optional fields are of nullable types.

• With the exception of required fields, each field has a default value:

  • null for optional fields,
  • emptyList() for repeated fields,
  • emptyMap() for map fields.

Here's the same Dinosaur message in Kotlin:

// Code generated by Wire protocol buffer compiler, do not edit.
// Source: squareup.dinosaurs.Dinosaur in squareup/dinosaurs/dinosaur.proto
package com.squareup.dinosaurs

import com.squareup.geology.Period
import com.squareup.wire.FieldEncoding
import com.squareup.wire.Message
import com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter
import com.squareup.wire.ProtoReader
import com.squareup.wire.ProtoWriter
import com.squareup.wire.Syntax.PROTO_3
import com.squareup.wire.WireField
import com.squareup.wire.internal.immutableCopyOf
import com.squareup.wire.internal.sanitize
import kotlin.Any
import kotlin.AssertionError
import kotlin.Boolean
import kotlin.Deprecated
import kotlin.DeprecationLevel
import kotlin.Int
import kotlin.Long
import kotlin.Nothing
import kotlin.String
import kotlin.collections.List
import kotlin.hashCode
import kotlin.jvm.JvmField
import okio.ByteString

class Dinosaur(
  /**
   * Common name of this dinosaur, like "Stegosaurus".
   */
  @field:WireField(
    tag = 1,
    adapter = "com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter#STRING",
    label = WireField.Label.OMIT_IDENTITY
  )
  val name: String = "",
  picture_urls: List<String> = emptyList(),
  @field:WireField(
    tag = 5,
    adapter = "com.squareup.geology.Period#ADAPTER",
    label = WireField.Label.OMIT_IDENTITY
  )
  val period: Period = Period.CRETACEOUS,
  unknownFields: ByteString = ByteString.EMPTY
) : Message<Dinosaur, Nothing>(ADAPTER, unknownFields) {
  /**
   * URLs with images of this dinosaur.
   */
  @field:WireField(
    tag = 2,
    adapter = "com.squareup.wire.ProtoAdapter#STRING",
    label = WireField.Label.REPEATED,
    jsonName = "pictureUrls"
  )
  val picture_urls: List<String> = immutableCopyOf("picture_urls", picture_urls)

  @Deprecated(
    message = "Shouldn't be used in Kotlin",
    level = DeprecationLevel.HIDDEN
  )
  override fun newBuilder(): Nothing = throw AssertionError()

  override fun equals(other: Any?): Boolean {
    if (other === this) return true
    if (other !is Dinosaur) return false
    if (unknownFields != other.unknownFields) return false
    if (name != other.name) return false
    if (picture_urls != other.picture_urls) return false
    if (period != other.period) return false
    return true
  }

  override fun hashCode(): Int {
    var result = super.hashCode
    if (result == 0) {
      result = unknownFields.hashCode()
      result = result * 37 + name.hashCode()
      result = result * 37 + picture_urls.hashCode()
      result = result * 37 + period.hashCode()
      super.hashCode = result
    }
    return result
  }

  override fun toString(): String {
    val result = mutableListOf<String>()
    result += """name=${sanitize(name)}"""
    if (picture_urls.isNotEmpty()) result += """picture_urls=${sanitize(picture_urls)}"""
    result += """period=$period"""
    return result.joinToString(prefix = "Dinosaur{", separator = ", ", postfix = "}")
  }

  fun copy(
    name: String = this.name,
    picture_urls: List<String> = this.picture_urls,
    period: Period = this.period,
    unknownFields: ByteString = this.unknownFields
  ): Dinosaur = Dinosaur(name, picture_urls, period, unknownFields)

  companion object {
    @JvmField
    val ADAPTER: ProtoAdapter<Dinosaur> = object : ProtoAdapter<Dinosaur>(
      FieldEncoding.LENGTH_DELIMITED,
      Dinosaur::class,
      "type.googleapis.com/squareup.dinosaurs.Dinosaur",
      PROTO_3,
      null
    ) {
      override fun encodedSize(value: Dinosaur): Int {
        var size = value.unknownFields.size
        if (value.name != "") size += ProtoAdapter.STRING.encodedSizeWithTag(1, value.name)
        size += ProtoAdapter.STRING.asRepeated().encodedSizeWithTag(2, value.picture_urls)
        if (value.period != Period.CRETACEOUS) size += Period.ADAPTER.encodedSizeWithTag(5,
            value.period)
        return size
      }

      override fun encode(writer: ProtoWriter, value: Dinosaur) {
        if (value.name != "") ProtoAdapter.STRING.encodeWithTag(writer, 1, value.name)
        ProtoAdapter.STRING.asRepeated().encodeWithTag(writer, 2, value.picture_urls)
        if (value.period != Period.CRETACEOUS) Period.ADAPTER.encodeWithTag(writer, 5, value.period)
        writer.writeBytes(value.unknownFields)
      }

      override fun decode(reader: ProtoReader): Dinosaur {
        var name: String = ""
        val picture_urls = mutableListOf<String>()
        var period: Period = Period.CRETACEOUS
        val unknownFields = reader.forEachTag { tag ->
          when (tag) {
            1 -> name = ProtoAdapter.STRING.decode(reader)
            2 -> picture_urls.add(ProtoAdapter.STRING.decode(reader))
            5 -> try {
              period = Period.ADAPTER.decode(reader)
            } catch (e: ProtoAdapter.EnumConstantNotFoundException) {
              reader.addUnknownField(tag, FieldEncoding.VARINT, e.value.toLong())
            }
            else -> reader.readUnknownField(tag)
          }
        }
        return Dinosaur(
          name = name,
          picture_urls = picture_urls,
          period = period,
          unknownFields = unknownFields
        )
      }

      override fun redact(value: Dinosaur): Dinosaur = value.copy(
        unknownFields = ByteString.EMPTY
      )
    }

    private const val serialVersionUID: Long = 0L
  }
}

Creating and accessing proto models is easy:

val stegosaurus = Dinosaur(
    name = "Stegosaurus",
    period = Period.JURASSIC
)

println("My favorite dinosaur existed in the ${stegosaurus.period} period.")

Here's how you can modify the object to add extra fields:

val stegosaurus = stegosaurus.copy(
    picture_urls = listOf("https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/Stegosaurus/")
)

println("Here are some photos of ${stegosaurus.name}: ${stegosaurus.picture_urls}")

Since version 3.0.0, Wire supports gRPC.

Wire can read .proto files from the local file system and from within .jar files.

The compiler can optionally prune your schema to a subset of root types and their transitive dependencies. This is useful when sharing a schema between projects: a Java service and Android app may each use a subset of a larger shared schema.

For more info on how to get started, see Wire Compiler & Gradle Plugin.

If you don't use Gradle, the compiler also has a command line interface. Just substitute wire-compiler-VERSION-jar-with-dependencies.jar with the path to your jar. Download the latest precompiled jar.

% java -jar wire-compiler-VERSION-jar-with-dependencies.jar \
    --proto_path=src/main/proto \
    --java_out=out \
    squareup/dinosaurs/dinosaur.proto \
    squareup/geology/period.proto
Writing com.squareup.dinosaurs.Dinosaur to out
Writing com.squareup.geology.Period to out

Supplying the --android flag to the compiler causes Wire messages to implement Parcelable.

If you use Proguard, then you need to add keep rules. The simplest option is to tell Proguard not to touch the Wire runtime library and your generated protocol buffers (of course these simple rules will miss opportunities to shrink and optimize the code):

-keep class com.squareup.wire.** { *; }
-keep class com.yourcompany.yourgeneratedcode.** { *; }

The wire-runtime package contains runtime support libraries that must be included in applications that use Wire-generated code.

With Maven:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.squareup.wire</groupId>
  <artifactId>wire-runtime-jvm</artifactId>
  <version>4.3.0</version>
</dependency>

With Gradle:

api "com.squareup.wire:wire-runtime:4.3.0"

Snapshots of the development version are available in Sonatype's snapshots repository.

Wire does not support:

• Groups - they are skipped when parsing binary input data

Wire supports custom options on messages and fields. Other custom options are ignored. Pass --excludes=google.protobuf.* to the compiler to omit options from the generated code.

See Google's excellent documentation on the structure and syntax of proto schemas.