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Protocol buffers are Google's serializing structured data mechanisms. It is a language and platform neutral mechanism similar to XML. Protocol Buffers allow for personalized data structures and can be used to generate source code to write and read the structured data. It also allows for structured data to be formed from a spectrum of data streams and using a variety of languages.
Protocol buffers are able to generate code in Java, Python, Objective-C, C++, Dart, Go, Ruby. C#, proto3, and more languages. The protocol compiler is written in C++, but is downloadable through a pre-built binary on GitHub. The pre-built binaries are provided for released versions only.
The protocol buffer language can be used to structure a message type, scalar value types, optional and default values, enumerations, nested types, extensions, oneofs, maps, packages, and more. With messages, a search request message can specify three fields for a single piece of data. They also allow for numbers to be used to identify fields in the message binary format.