Protobuf to json in python

Question

I have an object that I de-serialize using protobuf in Python. When I print the object it looks like a python object, however when I try to convert it to json I have all sorts of problems.

For example, if I use json.dumps() I get that the object (the generated code from protoc) does not contain a _ dict _ error.

If I use jsonpickle I get UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 97: invalid start byte.

Test code below is using jsonpickle with the error shown above.

if len(sys.argv) < 2:     print ("Error: missing ser file")     sys.exit() else :     fileLocation = sys.argv[1]  org = BuildOrgObject(fileLocation)   org = org.Deserialize()   #print (org) jsonObj = jsonpickle.encode(org) print (jsonObj) 

Answer 1

I'd recommend using protobuf↔json converters from google's protobuf library:

from google.protobuf.json_format import MessageToJson  json_obj = MessageToJson(org) 

You can also serialise the protobuf to a dictionary:

from google.protobuf.json_format import MessageToDict dict_obj = MessageToDict(org) 

Refer to the protobuf package API documentation: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/python/ (see module google.protobuf.json_format).