Nil values not allowed for gRPC in Ruby (proto3)

Question

Hi I am using gRPC Ruby plugin to communicate to a service. The proto definition contains(proto3):

uint32 id = 1;

But, when I assign nil to id, it throws an error - expected number for integral field. But for strings, nil values work fine. How do I allow nil values for integral / float fields?

Proto3 doesn't allow empty values, so it doesn't make sense there to set it to nil. You can use proto2 if you need field presence. — Carl Mastrangelo, Jun 07 '16 at 23:00

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 22 '17 at 13:13

The default values for strings in proto3 is empty - https://github.com/google/protobuf/issues/359

Hence it can receive the nil value without returning an error, Integers on the other hand have default values set to 0. Try passing 0 in case you do not want to pass any value.

Suggestion: - In case you do not wish to pass any tuples for a message written in proto3 you can leave the message blank which is a very valid way to define a message.

For Instance:-

syntax="proto3"
service Foo{
            rpc Index(Empty) Returns(Nothing){}
            }
message Empty{}
message Nothing{}

Nil values not allowed for gRPC in Ruby (proto3)

1 Answers1