Protobuf

So far we learned about the JSON format of messages that we were exchanging with the server. There is also another format that we can use, and that is Protobuf. One reason we started with JSON format, was that it's a simpler approach, and therefore makes the code examples shorter, which in turn allowes the reader to focus more on the bigger picture being described. You might ask then what's the point of using this other format. Let's start with a very basic comparison table:

Format	Size	Hassle of Using	When Makes Sense
JSON	Large	Almost None	Small amount of users
Protobuf	Small	A Lot	Large amount of users

The messages in Protobuf format are much shorter in size compared to JSON, and that results in less data being transmitted over the network. It might seem that using the Protobuf is the absolute better choice, but it's not that simple. One can argue against the use of Protobuf in some cases. Using Protobuf makes more sense when there are multiple clients connecting to the server, and by more we mean thousands and thousands more. Usualy if your program has less than a 1000 clients, the difference between trafic being saved is not worth the hassles of dealing with Protobuf. We later see an example of comparing the size of messages in these two strucures and a way to roughly calculate the amount of traffic base on the RATE_LIMIT concept.

Protobuf is a data interchange language developed by Google, and it has its own syntax for defining data structures and rules and relationship between them. The contents in this langauge are written in files with a .proto extension. In order to use these files in a programming language, they must be compiled first, and to do that we need to install its compiler.