![ProtoBuf.js - protobuf for JavaScript](https://raw.github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/master/ProtoBuf.png)
=====================================

**Protocol Buffers** are a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible way of serializing structured data for use
in communications protocols, data storage, and more, originally designed at Google ([see](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview)).

**ProtoBuf.js** is a pure JavaScript implementation on top of [ByteBuffer.js](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ByteBuffer.js)
including a .proto parser, message class building and simple encoding and decoding. There is no compilation step
required, it's super easy to use and it works out of the box on .proto files!

Getting started
---------------
* **Step 1:** Become familar with [Google's Protocol Buffers (protobuf)](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview)
* **Step 2:** Head straight to [our wiki for up to date usage information and examples](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/wiki)
* **Step 3:** Build something cool! :-)

Features
--------
* [RequireJS](http://requirejs.org/)/AMD compatible
* [node.js](http://nodejs.org)/CommonJS compatible, also available via [npm](https://npmjs.org/package/protobufjs)
* Browser compatible
* [Closure Compiler](https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/) compatible (fully annotated, [externs](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/tree/master/externs))
* Fully documented using [jsdoc3](https://github.com/jsdoc3/jsdoc)
* Well tested through [test.js](https://github.com/dcodeIO/test.js)
* [ByteBuffer.js](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ByteBuffer.js) is the only production dependency
* Fully compatible to the official implementation including advanced features
* Small footprint (even smaller if you use a noparse build)
* proto2js command line utility

Documentation
-------------
* [Read the official protobuf guide](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview)
* [Read our wiki](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/wiki)
* [Read the API docs](http://htmlpreview.github.com/?http://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/master/docs/ProtoBuf.html)
* [Check out the examples](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/tree/master/examples)

Tests [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js.png?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js)
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* [View source](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/blob/master/tests/suite.js)
* [View report](https://travis-ci.org/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js)

Downloads
---------
* [ZIP-Archive](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/archive/master.zip)
* [Tarball](https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/tarball/master)

Contributors
------------
[Daniel Wirtz](https://github.com/dcodeIO) (maintainer), [Frank Xu](https://github.com/yyfrankyy),
[Dretch](https://github.com/Dretch), [shirmin](https://github.com/shirmin), [Nikolai Vavilov](https://github.com/seishun)

**License:** [Apache License, Version 2.0](http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html) - Logo derived from [W3C HTML5 Logos](http://www.w3.org/html/logo/) (CC A 3.0)
