Support for google.protobuf.Timestamp as string

[netanel-utila]

Currently it returns:

{
  $typeName: "google.protobuf.Timestamp",
  seconds: 1727445165n,
  nanos: 865585000,
}

Migrating from ts-proto that supports useDate string:

version: v1
plugins:
  - name: ts_proto
    out: ../genproto/ts_web
    opt:
      - useDate=string

How can we do this using this library?

[timostamm]

Fields that use a Timestamp message always use a Timestamp message in generated code. There are a few functions for conversion, see /~https://github.com/bufbuild/protobuf-es/blob/v2.2.2/MANUAL.md#googleprotobuftimestamp

You can also use toJson and fromJson to convert to and from the JSON representation, which is a string - likely the same format that ts-proto uses:

import { fromJson, toJson } from "@bufbuild/protobuf";
import { timestampNow, TimestampSchema } from "@bufbuild/protobuf/wkt";

const str = toJson(TimestampSchema, timestampNow());
const ts = fromJson(TimestampSchema, str);
console.log(str, ts);

[netanel-utila]

Yes, I know, but it will not be comfortable for our clients that use our SDK.

[timostamm]

Yes, I know, but it will not be comfortable for our clients that use our SDK.

Is that because of backwards compatibility? I'm not sure that a string is a great representation for end users. Won't they have to parse the strings to make use of them?

We'd love to use Temporal.Instant to represent google.protobuf.Timestamp fields. It's part of the proposed Temporal API that aims to solve many problems with the ECMAScript Date object. I hope that it reaches the final stage soon.