How would you encode a Map using Protocol Buffers?

Question

I\'m trying to use Protocol Buffers for message serialization.

My message format should contain Map< String, Object > entries ... but how do I write the .proto defini

Answer 1

I'd model a tuple with a key and a value (probably one value field per type that the value could be). Then just have a repeated list of that tuple type. You'd need to build the map itself in code.

When you say you can't specify the types - what sort of types are you talking about? If you have an optional field of each type in the tuple, then that would cope for all the primitives - and you could map messages by serializing them into a byte string.

It sounds like the level of "unstructure" you have may not be a good fit for PB though.