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Optional primitives in proto3 (feature idea) #223

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ejball opened this issue Feb 27, 2015 · 1 comment
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Optional primitives in proto3 (feature idea) #223

ejball opened this issue Feb 27, 2015 · 1 comment

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@ejball
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ejball commented Feb 27, 2015

As regards the removal of presence logic for primitives in proto3, I wonder if you could consider supporting nullable<T>.

It would be like map<K,V>, but for primitives that need presence logic. For example, these messages could be effectively equivalent:

message A {
  nullable<string> name = 1;
}
message B {
  message NullableString {
    string value = 1;
  }
  NullableString name = 1;
}

I'd certainly be open to a better name. Perhaps optional<string>, if it isn't too confusing, since optional means something somewhat different in proto2.
@liujisi
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liujisi commented Feb 28, 2015

There will be well know types added in the default protobuf runtime in the next release. See the wrappers.proto:
https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/96e379ff8bc6907d044c62c1381b8e5a793b6a7a/src/google/protobuf/wrappers.proto
It provides field presence info for primitive fields without introducing new syntax. Runtime libraries that support well know types may choose to use a more efficient representation for the messages (or provide additional functions). Binary format will be compatible as if they are normal wrapper messages.

@liujisi liujisi closed this as completed Feb 28, 2015
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@ejball @liujisi