Protobuf - List/Repeated

Lists are one of the composite datatypes of Protobuf. Protobuf translates this to a java.util.list interface in Java.

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

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

message Theater {
   repeated string snacks = 8;
}

Now our message class contains a list for snacks. Note that although we have a string list, we can as well have number, Boolean, custom data type list.

To use Protobuf, we will now have to use 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, we will have a writer to write the theater information −

package com.tutorialspoint.theater;

import java.util.List;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import com.tutorialspoint.theater.TheaterOuterClass.Theater;

public class TheaterWriter{
   public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
      List<String> snacks = new ArrayList<>();
      snacks.add("Popcorn");
      snacks.add("Coke");
      snacks.add("Chips");
      snacks.add("Soda");
	    
      Theater theater = Theater.newBuilder()
         .addAllSnacks(snacks)
         .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 will 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:
snacks: "Popcorn"
snacks: "Coke"
snacks: "Chips"
snacks: "Soda"

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
snacks: "Popcorn"
snacks: "Coke"
snacks: "Chips"
snacks: "Soda"

So, as we see, we are able to read the serialized list by deserializing the binary data to Theater object. In the next chapter, we will look at the map data type of Protobuf.

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