protobuf

Protobuf

• https://github.com/golang/protobuf/issues/1370
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26744873/converting-map-to-struct
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41348512/protobuf-unmarshal-unknown

I think I found a fix for ambiguous data. From my testing, problems only happen with protowire.BytesType, as the result can be a string, bytes or message. You can solve some cases by seeing if the data will parse as a message, or by checking if the data is binary [1]. However if the data can parse as a message, the result could be multiple types.

To solve this, I wrote a package that has separate types for message, string and bytes. If I encounter ambiguous data, I add two entries. One as a string (or bytes) and one as a message. I give both the same field number, and use my new types as the discriminator.

1. https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.17.6/src/net/http/sniff.go#L297-L309