Getting all field names from a protocol buffer?

Question

I want to get all the field names of a proto into a list. Is there a way to do this? I looked in the documentation and there doesn't seem to be anything for this.

Answer 1

Every proto class possess a DESCRIPTOR class variable that can be used to inspect the fields of corresponding protobuf messages.

Have a look at the documentation of the Descriptor and FieldDescriptor classes for more details.

Here is a simple example to get the FieldDescriptors of all the fields in message into a list:

res = message.DESCRIPTOR.fields 

To get the names of the fields "exactly as they appear in the .proto file":

res = [field.name for field in message.DESCRIPTOR.fields] 

or (from the comments):

res = message.DESCRIPTOR.fields_by_name.keys() 

To get the full names of the fields "including containing scope":

res = [field.full_name for field in message.DESCRIPTOR.fields]