Protobuf.js: Encode bug? (TypeError: val.copy is not a function)

[r0qs]

Hello, I'm running protobufjs version 6.0.1 and I'm getting this error when try to encode a json:

/home/rodrigo/src/nodejs/socket/node_modules/protobufjs/src/writer.js:518
        val.copy(buf, pos, 0, val.length);
            ^

TypeError: val.copy is not a function
    at Op.writeBytesBuffer [as fn] (/home/rodrigo/src/nodejs/socket/node_modules/protobufjs/src/writer.js:518:13)
    at BufferWriter.finish_buffer [as finish] (/home/rodrigo/src/nodejs/socket/node_modules/protobufjs/src/writer.js:559:14)
    at Function.encode (/home/rodrigo/src/nodejs/socket/node_modules/protobufjs/src/inherits.js:68:63)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/rodrigo/src/nodejs/socket/server.js:37:20)
    at Module._compile (module.js:571:32)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:580:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:488:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:447:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:439:3)
    at Module.runMain (module.js:605:10)

The following code generate the error above. I'm doing something wrong? The documentation looks outdated

const protobuf = require("protobufjs")
const event = protobuf.parse(fs.readFileSync('./event.proto').toString())
const Prototype = protobuf.Prototype

function Event(properties) {
    Prototype.call(this, properties)
}
protobuf.inherits(Event, event.root.lookup('Event'))

var evt = new Event(
  {
    "_developerApplication": {},
    "creator": {
      "name": "Test"
    },
    "_responseConfigError": {},
    "_userAgent": "Dalvik/2.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 6.0.1; SM-J500M Build/MMB29M)",
    "version": "1.2",
    "tags": ["_successful"],
    "entries": {}
  }
)
var buffer = Event.encode(evt)

[dcodeIO]

Looks like one of your fields is of type bytes but isn't set to a buffer. What's in event.proto?

On docs: The wiki refers to protobuf.js 5 but you are currently using protobuf.js 6 (see the README or the API documentation).

[r0qs]

Hi @dcodeIO, this is my event.proto file:

syntax = "proto3";

option go_package = "protobuf";

message Event {
  Creator creator = 1;
  Organization _organization = 2;
  API _api = 3;
  Resource _resource = 4;
}

message Creator {
  string name = 1;
}

message Organization {
  int64 id = 1;
  string name = 2;
  string slug = 3;
}

message API {
  int64 id = 1;
  string path = 2;
  string name = 3;
  Version version = 4;
}

message Version {
  int64 id = 1;
  string path = 2;
  int64 package = 3;
  bytes package_name = 4;
  bool package_auto_deployable = 5;
}

message Resource {
  int64 id = 1;
  string path = 2;
  bytes name = 3;
  Endpoint endpoint = 4;
}

message Endpoint {
  string url = 1;
  string encoding = 2;
}

Thank you for the hint, I realized that i was using a wrong json to create the event, so this is the correct one. However, the problem still occurring.

var evt = new Event(
  {
    "creator": {
      "name": "Me"
    },
    "_organization": {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Test",
      "slug": "test"
    },
    "_api": {
      "id": 1,
      "path": "/test",
      "name": "Candies API",
      "version": {
        "id": 1,
        "path": "/v1",
        "package": 10,
        "package_name": "dGVzdGluZyBwcm90b2J1Zg==",
        "package_auto_deployable": true
      }
    },
    "_resource": {
      "id": 1,
      "path": "/choco",
      "name": "Q2hvY29sYXRlIHJlc291cmNl",
      "endpoint": {
        "url": "http://endpoint:8080/",
        "encoding": "UTF-8"
      }
    }
  }
)

[r0qs]

If I remove this field:

"name": "Q2hvY29sYXRlIHJlc291cmNl"

The code works...

[dcodeIO]

Looks like this field is base64 encoded. At the moment, there is no base64 decoder included, but if you change this field to a buffer (i.e. Buffer.from("Q2hvY29sYXRlIHJlc291cmNl", "base64")) it should work.

[r0qs]

Here doesn't is buf.copy instead of val.copy ?

function writeBytesBuffer(buf, pos, val) {
    if (val.length)
        val.copy(buf, pos, 0, val.length);
}

This fix my issue.

[dcodeIO]

This copies buf to buf but the actual value is in val. Might not throw, but doesn't do what you want.

[r0qs]

True, I'll do as you suggested, thanks!