xref: /nanopb-2.7.6/docs/index.md

# Nanopb: Overview

Nanopb is an ANSI-C library for encoding and decoding messages in
Google's [Protocol Buffers](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/overview)
format with minimal requirements for RAM and code space. It is primarily
suitable for 32-bit microcontrollers.

Documentation version
---------------------

This documentation applies for nanopb 0.4.0 and later versions. For
documentation of older releases,
[see here](https://github.com/nanopb/nanopb/blob/maintenance_0.3/docs/index.rst).

Overall structure
-----------------

For the runtime program, you always need `pb.h` for type declarations
and `pb_common.h/c` for base functions. Depending on whether you want
to encode, decode, or both, you also need `pb_encode.h/c` or
`pb_decode.h/c`.

The high-level encoding and decoding functions take a pointer to
`pb_msgdesc_t` structure, which describes the fields of a message
structure. Usually you want these autogenerated from a `.proto` file.
The tool script `nanopb_generator.py` accomplishes this.

![Image: Nanopb generator flow](generator_flow.svg)

So a typical project might include these files:

1. Nanopb runtime library:
    -   pb.h
    -   pb_common.h and pb_common.c (always needed)
    -   pb_decode.h and pb_decode.c (needed for decoding messages)
    -   pb_encode.h and pb_encode.c (needed for encoding messages)

2. Protocol description (you can have many):
    -   person.proto (just an example)
    -   person.pb.c (autogenerated, contains message descriptors)
    -   person.pb.h (autogenerated, contains type declarations and macros)

Features and limitations
------------------------

**Features**

1)  Pure C runtime
2)  Small code size (5--10 kB depending on processor and compilation options, plus any message definitions)
3)  Small ram usage (typically \~300 bytes stack, plus any message structs)
4)  Allows specifying maximum size for strings and arrays, so that they can be allocated statically.
5)  No malloc needed: everything can be allocated statically or on the stack. Optional malloc support available.
6)  You can use either encoder or decoder alone to cut the code size in half.
7)  Support for most protobuf features, including: all data types,
    nested submessages, default values, repeated and optional fields,
    oneofs, packed arrays, extension fields.
8)  Callback mechanism for handling messages larger than can fit in available RAM.
9)  Extensive set of tests.

**Limitations**

1)  Some speed has been sacrificed for code size.
2)  Encoding is focused on writing to streams. For memory buffers only it could be made more efficient.
3)  The deprecated Protocol Buffers feature called "groups" is not supported.
4)  Fields in the generated structs are ordered by the tag number, instead of the natural ordering in .proto file.
5)  Unknown fields are not preserved when decoding and re-encoding a message.
6)  Reflection (runtime introspection) is not supported. E.g. you can't request a field by giving its name in a string.
7)  Numeric arrays are always encoded as packed, even if not marked as packed in .proto.
8)  Cyclic references between messages are supported only in callback and malloc mode.
9)  Nanopb doesn't have a stable ABI (application binary interface)
    between versions, so using it as a shared library (.so / .dll)
    requires extra care.

Getting started
---------------

For starters, consider this simple message:

~~~~ protobuf
message Example {
    required int32 value = 1;
}
~~~~

Save this in `message.proto` and compile it:

    user@host:~$ python nanopb/generator/nanopb_generator.py message.proto

You should now have in `message.pb.h`:

    typedef struct {
       int32_t value;
    } Example;

    extern const pb_msgdesc_t Example_msg;
    #define Example_fields &Example_msg

Then you have to include the nanopb headers and the generated header:

    #include <pb_encode.h>
    #include "message.pb.h"

Now in your main program do this to encode a message:

    Example mymessage = {42};
    uint8_t buffer[10];
    pb_ostream_t stream = pb_ostream_from_buffer(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
    pb_encode(&stream, Example_fields, &mymessage);

After that, buffer will contain the encoded message. The number of bytes
in the message is stored in `stream.bytes_written`. You can feed the
message to `protoc --decode=Example message.proto` to verify its
validity.

For a complete example of the simple case, see [examples/simple/simple.c](https://github.com/nanopb/nanopb/blob/master/examples/simple/simple.c).
For a more complex example with network interface, see the [examples/network_server](https://github.com/nanopb/nanopb/tree/master/examples/network_server) subdirectory.

Compiler requirements
---------------------

Nanopb should compile with most ansi-C compatible compilers. It however
requires a few header files to be available:

1)  `string.h`, with these functions: `strlen`, `memcpy`, `memset`
2)  `stdint.h`, for definitions of `int32_t` etc.
3)  `stddef.h`, for definition of `size_t`
4)  `stdbool.h`, for definition of `bool`
5)  `limits.h`, for definition of `CHAR_BIT`

If these header files do not come with your compiler, you can use the
file `extra/pb_syshdr.h` instead. It contains an example of how to
provide the dependencies. You may have to edit it a bit to suit your
custom platform.

To use the pb_syshdr.h, define `PB_SYSTEM_HEADER` as
`"pb_syshdr.h"` (including the quotes). Similarly, you can provide a
custom include file, which should provide all the dependencies listed
above.

Running the test cases
----------------------

Extensive unittests and test cases are included under the `tests`
folder.

To build the tests, you will need the [scons](http://www.scons.org/)
build system. The tests should be runnable on most platforms. Windows
and Linux builds are regularly tested. The tests also support embedded
targets: STM32 (ARM Cortex-M) and AVR builds are regularly tested.

In addition to the build system, you will also need a working Google
Protocol Buffers `protoc` compiler, and the Python bindings for Protocol
Buffers.

Easiest way to install dependencies is to use the Python package manager
[pip](https://pypi.org/project/pip/), which works on all platforms supported by Python:

    pip3 install scons protobuf grpcio-tools