Advantages of Protobuf for Serialization in Python

The Real Python Podcast

Would you like a way to send structured serialized data between different platforms and languages? What if the data was self-documenting, could automatically generate Python code, and would validate itself? This week on the show, Liran Haimovitch talks about protocol buffers and communicating with microservices through Remote Procedure Calls (RPC).

Protocol buffers, aka protobuf, are a language-neutral, platform-neutral system for serializing structured data. Liran talks about how they go beyond text-based protocols like JSON, providing the benefits above, along with faster transmissions and a smaller footprint.

Liran shares how his company uses protobuf to communicate between their tools. We also discuss using gRPC to communicate between microservices and scaling infrastructure in either direction.

Course Spotlight: Testing Your Code With pytest

In this video course, you’ll learn how to take your testing to the next level with pytest. You’ll cover intermediate and advanced pytest features such as fixtures, marks, parameters, and plugins. With pytest, you can make your test suites fast, effective, and less painful to maintain.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:01:59 – PyCon US 2022 Talk on protobuf
• 00:04:46 – PyCon 2019 Talk on Understanding Python’s Debugging Internals
• 00:05:34 – The Production-First Mindset Podcast
• 00:07:03 – Protobuf and serialization
• 00:11:17 – Static vs dynamic serializers
• 00:13:58 – Text vs binary serializers and metadata
• 00:21:08 – How long have you been using protobuf?
• 00:21:40 – What does it look like to set up?
• 00:24:45 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:26:11 – Performance challenges and trade-offs
• 00:34:29 – Remote procedure calls
• 00:41:13 – Using RPC for microservices
• 00:47:21 – Scaling your infrastructure up or down
• 00:50:35 – Working across different languages
• 00:54:02 – What is Rookout?
• 00:55:11 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
• 00:55:59 – What do you want to learn next?
• 00:56:57 – How can people learn more about what you do?
• 00:57:31 – Thanks and goodbye

Show Links:

• Rookout | Painless Cloud-Native Debugging
• Liran Haimovitch - Understanding Python’s Debugging Internals - PyCon 2019 - YouTube
• The Production-First Mindset Podcast
• Liran Haimovitch: Effective Protobuf: Everything You Wanted To Know, But Never Dared To Ask - PyCon 2022 - YouTube
• Protocol Buffers | Google Developers
• Frequently Asked Questions - Protocol Buffers | Google Developers
• Thrift protocol stack — Thrift Tutorial 1.0 documentation
• Python Microservices With gRPC – Real Python
• gRPC - Modern Open Source High Performance Remote Procedure Call Framework
• gRPC vs REST: Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design | Google Cloud Blog
• Welcome to PyCon US 2022
• Rust Programming Language

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• Working With JSON in Python
• Testing Your Code With pytest
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