# Protocol Buffers for Go with Gadgets
[](https://travis-ci.org/gogo/protobuf)
gogoprotobuf is a fork of golang/protobuf with extra code generation features.
This code generation is used to achieve:
- fast marshalling and unmarshalling
- more canonical Go structures
- goprotobuf compatibility
- less typing by optionally generating extra helper code
- peace of mind by optionally generating test and benchmark code
- other serialization formats
Keeping track of how up to date gogoprotobuf is relative to golang/protobuf is done in this
issue
## Users
These projects use gogoprotobuf:
- etcd - blog - sample proto file
- spacemonkey - blog
- badoo - sample proto file
- mesos-go - sample proto file
- heka - the switch from golang/protobuf to gogo/protobuf when it was still on code.google.com
- cockroachdb - sample proto file
- go-ipfs - sample proto file
- rkive-go - sample proto file
- dropbox
- srclib - sample proto file
- adyoulike
- cloudfoundry - sample proto file
- kubernetes - go2idl built on top of gogoprotobuf
- dgraph - release notes - benchmarks
- centrifugo - release notes - blog
- docker swarmkit - sample proto file
- nats.io - go-nats-streaming
- tidb - Communication between tidb and tikv
- protoactor-go - vanity command that also generates actors from service definitions
- containerd - vanity command with custom field names that conforms to the golang convention.
- nakama
- proteus
- carbonzipper stack
- SendGrid
Please let us know if you are using gogoprotobuf by posting on our GoogleGroup.
### Mentioned
- Cloudflare - go serialization talk - Albert Strasheim
- GopherCon 2014 Writing High Performance Databases in Go by Ben Johnson
- alecthomas' go serialization benchmarks
## Getting Started
There are several ways to use gogoprotobuf, but for all you need to install go and protoc.
After that you can choose:
- Speed
- More Speed and more generated code
- Most Speed and most customization
### Installation
To install it, you must first have Go (at least version 1.6.3) installed (see [http://golang.org/doc/install](http://golang.org/doc/install)). Go 1.8.3 and 1.9 are continuously tested.
Next, install the standard protocol buffer implementation from [https://github.com/google/protobuf](https://github.com/google/protobuf).
Most versions from 2.3.1 should not give any problems, but 2.6.1, 3.0.2 and 3.4.0 are continuously tested.
### Speed
Install the protoc-gen-gofast binary
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gofast
Use it to generate faster marshaling and unmarshaling go code for your protocol buffers.
protoc --gofast_out=. myproto.proto
This does not allow you to use any of the other gogoprotobuf [extensions](https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/extensions.md).
### More Speed and more generated code
Fields without pointers cause less time in the garbage collector.
More code generation results in more convenient methods.
Other binaries are also included:
protoc-gen-gogofast (same as gofast, but imports gogoprotobuf)
protoc-gen-gogofaster (same as gogofast, without XXX_unrecognized, less pointer fields)
protoc-gen-gogoslick (same as gogofaster, but with generated string, gostring and equal methods)
Installing any of these binaries is easy. Simply run:
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/proto
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/{binary}
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/gogoproto
These binaries allow you to using gogoprotobuf [extensions](https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/extensions.md).
### Most Speed and most customization
Customizing the fields of the messages to be the fields that you actually want to use removes the need to copy between the structs you use and structs you use to serialize.
gogoprotobuf also offers more serialization formats and generation of tests and even more methods.
Please visit the [extensions](https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/blob/master/extensions.md) page for more documentation.
Install protoc-gen-gogo:
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/proto
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/jsonpb
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/protoc-gen-gogo
go get github.com/gogo/protobuf/gogoproto
## GRPC
It works the same as golang/protobuf, simply specify the plugin.
Here is an example using gofast:
protoc --gofast_out=plugins=grpc:. my.proto