Base 128 Varints
"To understand your simple protocol buffer encoding, you first need to understand varints. Varints are a method of serializing integers using one or more bytes. Smaller numbers take a smaller number of bytes.
Each byte in a varint, except the last byte, has the most significant bit (msb) set – this indicates that there are further bytes to come. The lower 7 bits of each byte are used to store the two's complement representation of the number in groups of 7 bits, least significant group first.
So, for example, here is the number 1 – it's a single byte, so the msb is not set:0000 0001
And here is 300 – this is a bit more complicated:1010 1100 0000 0010
How do you figure out that this is 300? First you drop the msb from each byte, as this is just there to tell us whether we've reached the end of the number (as you can see, it's set in the first byte as there is more than one byte in the varint): 1010 1100 0000 0010 → 010 1100 000 0010
You reverse the two groups of 7 bits because, as you remember, varints store numbers with the least significant group first. Then you concatenate them to get your final value:000 0010 010 1100 → 000 0010 ++ 010 1100 → 100101100 → 256 + 32 + 8 + 4 = 300"
The available wire types are as follows:
| Type | Meaning | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Varint | int32, int64, uint32, uint64, sint32, sint64, bool, enum |
| 1 | 64-bit | fixed64, sfixed64, double |
| 2 | Length-delimited | string, bytes, embedded messages, packed repeated fields |
| 3 | Start group | groups (deprecated) |
| 4 | End group | groups (deprecated) |
| 5 | 32-bit | fixed32, sfixed32, float |
Let's say you have the following very simple message definition:
message Test1 {
optional int32 a = 1;
}
In an application, you create a
Test1 message and set a to 150. You then serialize the message to an output stream. If you were able to examine the encoded message, you'd see three bytes:08 96 01
developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/proto3
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