flowtype-protoc-gen

Protoc Plugin for generating Flowtype Declarations

This repository contains a protoc plugin that generates Flowtype declarations (.flow.js files) that match the JavaScript output of protoc --js_out=import_style=commonjs,binary. This plugin can also output service definitions as both .js and .flow.js files in the structure required by grpc-web.

This plugin is tested and written using TypeScript 2.7.

Installation

npm

As a prerequisite, download or install protoc (the protocol buffer compiler) for your platform from the github releases page or via a package manager (ie: brew, apt).

For the latest stable version of the flowtype-protoc-gen plugin:

npm install flowtype-protoc-gen

For our latest build straight from master:

npm install flowtype-protoc-gen@next

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

Usage

As mentioned above, this plugin for protoc serves two purposes:

1. Generating Flowtype Definitions for CommonJS modules generated by protoc
2. Generating gRPC Service Stubs for use with grpc-web.

Generating Flowtype Definitions for CommonJS modules generated by protoc

By default, protoc will generate ES5 code when the --js_out flag is used (see javascript compiler documentation). You have the choice of two module syntaxes, CommonJS or closure. This plugin (flowtype-protoc-gen) can be used to generate Flowtype definition files (.flow.js) to provide type hints for CommonJS modules only.

To generate Flowtype definitions you must first configure protoc to use this plugin and then specify where you want the Flowtype definitions to be written to using the --flow_out flag.

# Path to this plugin 
PROTOC_GEN_FLOW_PATH="./node_modules/.bin/protoc-gen-flow"
 
# Directory to write generated code to (.js and .flow.js files) 
OUT_DIR="./generated"
 
protoc \
    --plugin="protoc-gen-flow=${PROTOC_GEN_FLOW_PATH}" \
    --js_out="import_style=commonjs,binary:${OUT_DIR}" \
    --flow_out="${OUT_DIR}" \
    users.proto base.proto

In the above example, the generated folder will contain both .js and .flow.js files which you can reference in your Flowtype project to get full type completion and make use of ES6-style import statements, eg:

import { MyMessage } from "../generated/users_pb";
import { MyMessage$AsClass } from "../generated/users_pb.flow";
 
const msg: MyMessage$AsClass = new MyMessage();
msg.setName("John Doe");

Generating gRPC Service Stubs for use with grpc-web

gRPC is a framework that enables client and server applications to communicate transparently, and makes it easier to build connected systems.

grpc-web is a comparability layer on both the server and client-side which allows gRPC to function natively in modern web-browsers.

To generate client-side service stubs from your protobuf files you must configure flowtype-protoc-gen to emit service definitions by passing the service=true param to the --flow_out flag, eg:

# Path to this plugin, Note this must be an abolsute path on Windows (see #15)
PROTOC_GEN_FLOW_PATH="./node_modules/.bin/protoc-gen-flow"

# Directory to write generated code to (.js and .flow.js files)
OUT_DIR="./generated"

protoc \
    --plugin="protoc-gen-flow=${PROTOC_GEN_FLOW_PATH}" \
    --js_out="import_style=commonjs,binary:${OUT_DIR}" \
    --flow_out="service=true:${OUT_DIR}" \
    users.proto base.proto

The generated folder will now contain both pb_service.js and pb_service.flow.js files which you can reference in your Flowtype project to make RPCs.

Note Note that these modules require a CommonJS environment. If you intend to consume these stubs in a browser environment you will need to use a module bundler such as webpack. Note Both js and flow.js service files will be generated regardless of whether there are service definitions in the proto files.

import { UserServiceClient, GetUserRequest } from "../generated/users_pb_service"
 
const client = new UserServiceClient("https://my.grpc/server");
const req = new GetUserRequest();
req.setUsername("johndoe");
client.getUser(req, (err, user) => { /* ... */ });

Examples

For a sample of the generated protos and service definitions, see examples.

To generate the examples from protos, please run ./generate.sh

Gotchas

By default the google-protobuf library will use the JavaScript number type to store 64bit float and integer values; this can lead to overflow problems as you exceed JavaScript's Number.MAX_VALUE. To work around this, you should consider using the jstype annotation on any 64bit fields, ie:

message Example {
  uint64 bigInt = 1 [jstype = JS_STRING];
}

bazel

Instructions for using flowtype-protoc-gen within a bazel build environment

Include the following in your WORKSPACE:

git_repository(
    name = "io_bazel_rules_go",
    commit = "6bee898391a42971289a7989c0f459ab5a4a84dd",  # master as of May 10th, 2018 
    remote = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go.git",
    )
load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:def.bzl", "go_rules_dependencies", "go_register_toolchains")
go_rules_dependencies()
go_register_toolchains()
 
http_archive(
  name = "io_bazel_rules_webtesting",
  strip_prefix = "rules_webtesting-master",
  urls = [ 
    "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_webtesting/archive/master.tar.gz", 
  ],
)
load("@io_bazel_rules_webtesting//web:repositories.bzl", "browser_repositories", "web_test_repositories")
web_test_repositories()
 
git_repository(
  name = "build_bazel_rules_nodejs",
  remote = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_nodejs.git",
  commit = "d334fd8e2274fb939cf447106dced97472534e80",
)
load("@build_bazel_rules_nodejs//:defs.bzl", "node_repositories")
node_repositories(package_json = ["//:package.json"])
 
git_repository(
    name = "flowtype_protoc_gen",
    remote = "https://github.com/chrisgervang/flowtype-protoc-gen.git",
    commit = "05c52b843edf9420be3a9549d01352dfeff76a5e",
)
 
load("@ts_protoc_gen//:defs.bzl", "typescript_proto_dependencies")
typescript_proto_dependencies()
 
git_repository(
  name = "build_bazel_rules_typescript",
  remote = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_typescript.git",
  commit = "3488d4fb89c6a02d79875d217d1029182fbcd797",
)
load("@build_bazel_rules_typescript//:defs.bzl", "ts_setup_workspace")
flow_setup_workspace()

Now in your BUILD.bazel:

load("@ts_protoc_gen//:defs.bzl", "typescript_proto_library")
 
filegroup(
  name = "proto_files",
  srcs = glob(["*.proto"]),
)
 
proto_library(
  name = "proto",
  srcs = [ 
    ":proto_files", 
  ],
)
 
typescript_proto_library(
  name = "generate",
  proto = ":proto",
)