How to implement ProtobufSerializer

Akka Libraries
1

Hello
I can’t find relevant information to implement ProtobufSerializer instead of jackson-json
Could you maybe confirm that ProtobufSerializer is more performant please?
If so I should I implement it? I found jackson serialization very easy to implement but apparently it is not so easy with ProtobufSerializer

thanks

2

There are two approaches.

  1. You use the generated protobuf classes as the actor messages or persistent events. Then you don’t have to do anything more. Akka has a built in ProtobufSerializer that is enabled for such classes. I see two drawabacks with this approach. It doesn’t work well with Akka typed. You loose some flexibility when it comes to message/event evolution.

  2. You create your own Akka serializer that transforms between your ordinary application message/event classes to and from the generated protobuf classes. There are plenty of code examples of such serializers in the Akka sources. The price of this is that you have to write boring boilerplate code for the mapping between the two representations. I would anyway pick this option.