How can I remove an item from a repeated protobuf field in python?

Question

I have a protobuf message that contains a repeated field. I would like to remove one of the items in the list but I can't seem to find a good way to do so without copying all of the items out of the repeated field into a list, clearing the repeated field, and repopulating it.

In C++ there is a RemoveLast() function, but this doesn't seem to appear in the python API...

Solution 1

As noted in the documentation, the object wrapping a repeated field in Protobuf behaves like a regular Python sequence. Therefore, you should be able to simply do

del foo.fields[index]

For example, to remove the last element,

del foo.fields[-1]

Solution 2

In Python, deleting an element from a list could be done in this way:

list.remove(item_to_be_removed)

or

del list[index]

Comments

[Catskul]

This is not a python list. It's a custom type. Remove is not a member.

[George V. Reilly]

If you want to delete all of the repeated fields, use del foo.fields[:]

[chase]

@Catskul this actually works as of protobuf 2.6; they've added the pythonic list-like operations extend() and remove() to the RepeatedCompositeFieldContainer type.