Akka Protobuf Serialization
Proto.Actor was created by Roger Johansson, the original creator of Akka.NET. The reason for creating yet another actor model framework was due to the many design issues faced while building Akka.NET. Akka.NET required the team to build custom thread pools, custom network layers, custom serialization, custom configuration support and much more.
What are protocol buffers?
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How do I start?
- Download and install the protocol buffer compiler.
- Read the overview.
- Try the tutorial for your chosen language.
I'm playing around with Akka's remoting and serialization facilities and want to understand a few things to get started. I've read over the documentation on serialization here:
According to the documentation, it seems that it would be enough to just supply these things in my application.conf, under:
And let's assume I have a case class under that package, such as:
And then in my actors, I can simly do something like this:
Would this configuration be enough, or would I need to do something more?I've looked at an external serializer mentioned from the documentation here:https://github.com/romix/akka-protostuff-serialization
This looks really promising, but I was looking for something standard that comes out of the box from Akka.
I'm also looking into testing for message version compatibility. Let's say Actor A talks to Actor B with MessageX
MessageX initially might contain fields like this:
Now let's say Actor B upgrades its version of Message X, lets call it Message X +1
Message X +1 now includes another field, like so:
But Actor A is still sending the older version of the message, just simply Message X... would Actor B still know how to deserialize the old message?
Akka Protobuf Serialization Example
Thanks for the help.
HiChews1232 Answers
The Protobuf serializer can only serialize Protobuf messages. So for things to work as you want you need to make MyMessage a protobuf message.
Viktor KlangViktor KlangAkka Protobuf Serialization Images
Just an additional information on your versioning concerns;
Protobuf can serialise/ deserialize different versions of the same message types. You have to sustain the already present fields' indexes and add the additional new ones accordingly, in your proto file descriptor.