Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Jsonnet VS Protocol Buffers

Compare Jsonnet VS Protocol Buffers and see what are their differences

Jsonnet logo Jsonnet

A powerful DSL for elegant description of JSON data.

Protocol Buffers logo Protocol Buffers

A method for serializing and interchanging structured data.
  • Jsonnet Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-26
  • Protocol Buffers Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02

Jsonnet features and specs

  • Configurability
    Jsonnet allows you to write configurations as code, enabling dynamic configuration generation and making it easier to manage complex configurations.
  • Extensibility
    Jsonnet supports functions and imports, enabling code reuse and modular configuration design across different files and projects.
  • JSON Compatibility
    Since Jsonnet is a JSON extension, it is fully compatible with JSON, meaning any valid JSON file is also valid in Jsonnet.
  • Reduce Repetition
    Jsonnet reduces redundancy through capabilities like variables and functions, helping to avoid repetitive configurations and boilerplate.
  • Final Manifest
    Jsonnet outputs a final manifest in JSON, providing a clean and widely-accepted data format that can be used directly by applications.

Possible disadvantages of Jsonnet

  • Learning Curve
    Jsonnet introduces new syntax and concepts (such as mixins and imports) that may require time to learn and adapt to, especially for developers familiar with plain JSON.
  • Tooling Support
    While gaining traction, Jsonnet still has limited tooling and IDE support compared to more established configuration languages or file formats.
  • Complexity in Parsing
    As a more expressive configuration language, Jsonnet may introduce complexity in parsing and understanding configuration files compared to using straightforward JSON.
  • Overhead
    The additional features and functionalities of Jsonnet can introduce computational overhead, potentially making it slower than using simple JSON for very massive configurations.

Protocol Buffers features and specs

  • Efficiency
    Protocol Buffers are designed to be compact and efficient, using less space compared to other serialization formats like XML or JSON. This efficiency benefits both storage and network transmission.
  • Backward and Forward Compatibility
    Protocol Buffers support easy schema evolution. New fields can be added to your protocol without breaking existing deployed programs that are compiled with an older version of the protocol.
  • Performance
    They offer fast serialization and deserialization, which can significantly improve performance in applications where speed is critical.
  • Language Support
    Protocol Buffers are supported in multiple programming languages, making them flexible for use in diverse tech stacks and across different systems.
  • Type Safety
    With Protocol Buffers, schemas are strictly defined, which provides a level of type safety compared to text-based formats like JSON or XML.

Possible disadvantages of Protocol Buffers

  • Learning Curve
    The initial setup and understanding of Protocol Buffers can be complex for those who are not familiar with binary serialization formats.
  • Debugging Difficulty
    Because Protocol Buffers use a compact and binary format, debugging can be more challenging compared to human-readable formats like JSON or XML.
  • Limited Human Readability
    As a binary format, Protocol Buffers are not easily readable without decoding, which can complicate manual inspection of data during development or troubleshooting.
  • Third-Party Dependency
    Using Protocol Buffers often requires integrating additional libraries into your project, which can introduce dependencies that need to be maintained.
  • Tooling Overhead
    The use of Protocol Buffers requires a compilation step and the generation of code from .proto files, which adds complexity and build-time overhead.

Jsonnet videos

Jsonnet

More videos:

  • Review - Using Jsonnet to Package Together Dashboards, Alerts and Exporters - Tom Wilkie
  • Review - Webinar: Writing Less YAML – Using jsonnet and kubecfg to Manage Kubernetes Resources

Protocol Buffers videos

Protocol Buffers- A Banked Journey - Christopher Reeves

More videos:

  • Review - justforfunc #30: The Basics of Protocol Buffers
  • Review - Complete Introduction to Protocol Buffers 3 : How are Protocol Buffers used?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Jsonnet and Protocol Buffers)
Configuration Management
66 66%
34% 34
Software Development
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
62 62%
38% 38

User comments

Share your experience with using Jsonnet and Protocol Buffers. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Jsonnet should be more popular than Protocol Buffers. It has been mentiond 37 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Jsonnet mentions (37)

  • Levels of Configuration Languages
    Https://jsonnet.org/ I never heard of this before. This seems like the JSON I wish I really had. Of course at some point you could just use JavaScript. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Standard ML idiosyncrasies
    I've been reading the book Modern Compiler Implementation in ML lately. It's been helpful to brush up on some concepts while developing Tsonnet (my typed-aspiring Jsonnet flavor) and I hope to learn a ton more. However, I'm growing dissatisfied with some details -- not specifically the book, but the choice of the development environment. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Tsonnet, a humble beginning
    For the past 2 years, I've been working extensively with Jsonnet, a configuration language that augments JSON and helps eliminate repetition in our config files. It has its limits (many by design), which keeps the language simple to use. But there's one thing that keeps nagging at me when I'm deep in the code: what's the shape of the input or output of this function? And wouldn't it be great if we could type... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Refactor Terraform Resource Names By One Command
    Jsonnet: Use --jsonnet (-j) for advanced, programmatically controlled renaming logic. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Kubernetes 101: Introduction
    Kubernetes does not provide or require a configuration language like Jsonnet, as it provides a declarative API that can be used with different types of declarative specifications. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

Protocol Buffers mentions (24)

  • Vibe Code Like a Pro: Build an MVP Web App with MongoDB Atlas in <1 Hour Using Cursor
    First, we need to define our data model and API endpoints using Protocol Buffers. They are an industry standard when it comes to low-latency, high-performance data serialization. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • Pulumi Gestalt 0.0.1 released
    A schema.json converter for easier ingestion (likely supporting Avro and Protobuf). - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Understanding Protocol Buffers: A Fast Alternative to JSON
    Protocol Buffers Documentation Protobuf Json JSON in API Development. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • gRPC: what is it? An introduction...
    For our luck, Go is one of the 11 languages with official libraries. It is important to say that the framework uses Protocol Buffer to serialize the message. The first step then is to install locally the protobuf and its Go plugins:. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Why should we use Protobuf in Web API as data transfer protocol.
    Note: Clients and services will ignore field numbers they do not recognize. For more details about Protobuf, visit protobuf.dev. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Jsonnet and Protocol Buffers, you can also consider the following products

Dhall Configuration Language - A non-repetitive alternative to YAML

Messagepack - An efficient binary serialization format.

TOML - TOML - Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language

gRPC - Application and Data, Languages & Frameworks, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), and Service Discovery

YAML - YAML 1.2 --- YAML: YAML Ain't Markup Language

JSON - (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format