Protobuf - Nested Class

Here, we will see how to create a nested class. Protobuf translates this to a nested Java class.

Continuing with the theater example, following is the syntax that we need to have to instruct Protobuf that we will be creating a nested class −

syntax = "proto3";
package theater;
option java_package = "com.tutorialspoint.theater";

message Theater {
   TheaterOwner owner = 10;
}
message TheaterOwner{
   string name = 1;
   string address = 2;
}

Now our class/message contains a nested class, i.e., information about the owner of the theater.

To use Protobuf, we will now have to use the protoc binary to create the required classes from this ".proto" file. Let us see how to do that −

protoc  --java_out=java/src/main/java proto_files\theater.proto

The above command should create the required files and now we can use it in our Java code. First, let's create a writer to write the theater information −

package com.tutorialspoint.theater;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterOuterClass.Theater;
import com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterOuterClass.TheaterOwner;

public class TheaterWriter{
   public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
      TheaterOwner owner = TheaterOwner.newBuilder()
         .setName("Anthony Gonsalves")
         .setAddress("513, St Paul Street, West Coast, California")
         .build();
	    
      Theater theater = Theater.newBuilder()
         .setOwner(owner)
         .build();
		
      String filename = "theater_protobuf_output";
      System.out.println("Saving theater information to file: " + filename);
		
      try(FileOutputStream output = new FileOutputStream(filename)){
         theater.writeTo(output);
      }
      System.out.println("Saved theater information with following data to disk: \n" + theater);
   }
}

Next, we have a reader to read the theater information −

package com.tutorialspoint.theater;

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.tutorialspoint.greeting.Greeting.Greet;
import com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterOuterClass.Theater;
import com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterOuterClass.Theater.Builder;

public class TheaterReader{
   public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
      Builder theaterBuilder = Theater.newBuilder();

      String filename = "theater_protobuf_output";
      System.out.println("Reading from file " + filename);
        
      try(FileInputStream input = new FileInputStream(filename)) {
         Theater theater = theaterBuilder.mergeFrom(input).build();
         System.out.println(theater);
      }
   }
}

Now, post compilation, let us execute the writer first −

> java -cp .\target\protobuf-tutorial-1.0.jar com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterWriter

Saving theater information to file: theater_protobuf_output
Saved theater information with following data to disk:
owner {
   name: "Anthony Gonsalves"
   address: "513, St Paul Street, West Coast, California"
}

Now, let us execute the reader to read from the same file −

java -cp .\target\protobuf-tutorial-1.0.jar com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterReader

Reading from file theater_protobuf_output
owner {
   name: "Anthony Gonsalves"
   address: "513, St Paul Street, West Coast, California"
}

So, as we see, we are able to read the serialized nested class data by deserializing the binary data to Theater object.

Advertisements