[go-nuts] GoMobile binding: why not using ProtocolBuffers or FlatBuffers?

[d***@gmail.com]

I have started playing with the GoMobile packages, and I must say it's very
promising.

I realized that binding types are still very limited at the moment, and if
I want to pass some complex structure I would better use a string
serialized JSON.


I was wondering, instead of writing a custom GoMobile binding mechanism,
why not using some cross-platform serialization protocols which are already
very well optimized?

I am considering things like Protocol Buffers or even Google's FlatBuffers.


Daniele

[Daniele Baroncelli]

if I want to pass some complex structure I would better use a string serialized JSON.

Sorry, I didn't explain it properly.
I meant, in case I want my Go functions to return a complex data structure to the native language, at the moment being limited in terms of types, I would make my function return a string containing a serialized JSON, which allows to return any type of data structure.

This made think that Go/native binding could actually br based on serialization protocols like protobuf and flatbuffers, which have the advantage of being very well optimized and supporting already all types.

[Daniele Baroncelli]

I have never used flatbuffers, but it seems incredibly fast to
encode/decode:
https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/md__benchmarks.html

[Darren Hoo]

I find it is much easier to use MsgPack, and it supports many languages
that includes Go, and it supports `go generate` just as native as JSON does.

Post by d***@gmail.com
I have started playing with the GoMobile packages, and I must say it's
very promising.
I realized that binding types are still very limited at the moment, and if
I want to pass some complex structure I would better use a string
serialized JSON.
I was wondering, instead of writing a custom GoMobile binding mechanism,
why not using some cross-platform serialization protocols which are already
very well optimized?
I am considering things like Protocol Buffers or even Google's FlatBuffers.
Daniele

[Daniele Baroncelli]

Flatbuffers is a Google technology and it uses pointer arithmetics with no
memory allocations.
It's up to 100 times faster than Protobuf.

I was just watching this video about Flatbuffers in Go:

Post by Darren Hoo
I find it is much easier to use MsgPack, and it supports many languages
that includes Go, and it supports `go generate` just as native as JSON does.

Post by d***@gmail.com
I have started playing with the GoMobile packages, and I must say it's
very promising.
I realized that binding types are still very limited at the moment, and
if I want to pass some complex structure I would better use a string
serialized JSON.
I was wondering, instead of writing a custom GoMobile binding mechanism,
why not using some cross-platform serialization protocols which are already
very well optimized?
I am considering things like Protocol Buffers or even Google's FlatBuffers.
Daniele