keas.pbpersist and keas.pbstate

Remember how I was talking about serializing data in ZODB using Google Protocol Buffers instead of pickles?  Well, Keas Inc. suggested the idea and asked me to work on it.  The first release of a package combination that implements the idea is ready:

  • keas.pbstate 0.1.1 (on PyPI), which helps you write classes that store all state in a Protocol Buffer message.
  • A patch for ZODB (available at packages.willowrise.org) that makes it possible to plug in serializers other than ZODB’s standard pickle format.
  • keas.pbpersist 0.1 (on PyPI), which registers a special serializer with ZODB so that ProtobufState objects get stored without any pickling.

This code is new, but the tests all pass and the coverage tests claim that every line of code is run by the tests at least once.  I hope these packages get used so we can find out their flaws.  I did my best to make keas.pbstate friendly, but there are some areas, object references in particular, where I don’t like the current syntax.  I don’t know if this code is fast–optimization would be premature!

I should mention that while working with protobuf, I got the feeling that C++ is the native language and Java and Python are second class citizens.  I wonder if I’d have the same feeling with other serialization formats.