Using Python, how do I get a binary serialization of my Google protobuf message?

Question

I see the function SerializeAsString in the protobuf Python documentation, but like this suggests, this gives me a string version of the binary data. Is there a way of serializing and parsing a binary array of protobuf data using Python?

We have a C++ application that stores the protobuf messages as binary data in a file. We'd like to read and write to the file using Python.

Solution 1

Python strings can hold binary data, therefore SerializeAsString returns binary data.

Solution 2

I think that strings are the usual way to represent binary data in Python. What do you exactly want to do?

[Edit]

Have a look at the struct module: http://docs.python.org/library/struct.html