Erroneous Serde Serialize implementation converts i64 to String about protoc-gen-prost HOT 3 CLOSED

This is neither an issue with the plugin, nor the upstream pbjson dependency. The Protobuf specification includes a specification for the canonical JSON form for a given Protobuf schema. In that specification, it requires that 64-bit integers be serialized as strings.

The underlying reason for this is that in JavaScript, and many parsers of JSON, all numbers are 64-bit floating points. A 64-bit floating point cannot precisely store any integer larger than 53 bits. Thus, a 64-bit integer of a certain size cannot be guaranteed to be interpreted correctly if written and read as a number. A string allows for the exact representation of that value, to be interpreted as necessary in a target deserializer.

Per that same specification, the reader for both 32-bit and 64-bit integers will accept both strings and raw numbers.

from protoc-gen-prost.

@neoeinstein Do you know if this is an issue with this plugin or with an upstream dependency like Prost?

from protoc-gen-prost.

@neoeinstein So what would you recommend if we are trying to use serde to serialize to some other format that's not JSON? The reason for confusion is that at face value looking at the serialize function it seemed to have been generic, I wasn't aware that it was JSON-specific

from protoc-gen-prost.