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ent/doc/md/tutorial-grpc-optional-fields.md
2022-09-30 08:59:53 +03:00

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---
id: grpc-optional-fields
title: Optional Fields
sidebar_label: Optional Fields
---
A common issue with Protobufs is that the way that nil values are represented: a zero-valued primitive field isn't
encoded into the binary representation, this means that applications cannot distinguish between zero and not-set for
primitive fields.
To support this, the Protobuf project supports some [Well-Known types](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/google.protobuf) called "wrapper types".
For example, the wrapper type for a `bool`, is called `google.protobuf.BoolValue` and is [defined as](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/991bcada050d7e9919503adef5b52547ec249d35/src/google/protobuf/wrappers.proto#L103-L107):
```protobuf title="ent/proto/entpb/entpb.proto"
// Wrapper message for `bool`.
//
// The JSON representation for `BoolValue` is JSON `true` and `false`.
message BoolValue {
// The bool value.
bool value = 1;
}
```
When `entproto` generates a Protobuf message definition, it uses these wrapper types to represent "Optional" ent fields.
Let's see this in action, modifying our ent schema to include an optional field:
```go title="ent/schema/user.go" {14-16}
// Fields of the User.
func (User) Fields() []ent.Field {
return []ent.Field{
field.String("name").
Unique().
Annotations(
entproto.Field(2),
),
field.String("email_address").
Unique().
Annotations(
entproto.Field(3),
),
field.String("alias").
Optional().
Annotations(entproto.Field(4)),
}
}
```
Re-running `go generate ./...`, observe that our Protobuf definition for `User` now looks like:
```protobuf title="ent/proto/entpb/entpb.proto" {8}
message User {
int32 id = 1;
string name = 2;
string email_address = 3;
google.protobuf.StringValue alias = 4; // <-- this is new
repeated Category administered = 5;
}
```
The generated service implementation also utilize this field. Observe in `entpb_user_service.go`:
```go title="ent/proto/entpb/entpb_user_service.go" {3-6}
func (svc *UserService) createBuilder(user *User) (*ent.UserCreate, error) {
m := svc.client.User.Create()
if user.GetAlias() != nil {
userAlias := user.GetAlias().GetValue()
m.SetAlias(userAlias)
}
userEmailAddress := user.GetEmailAddress()
m.SetEmailAddress(userEmailAddress)
userName := user.GetName()
m.SetName(userName)
for _, item := range user.GetAdministered() {
administered := int(item.GetId())
m.AddAdministeredIDs(administered)
}
return m, nil
}
```
To use the wrapper types in our client code, we can use helper methods supplied by the [wrapperspb](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-go/blob/3f51f05e40d61e930a5416f1ed7092cef14cc058/types/known/wrapperspb/wrappers.pb.go#L458-L460)
package to easily build instances of these types. For example in `cmd/client/main.go`:
```go {5}
func randomUser() *entpb.User {
return &entpb.User{
Name: fmt.Sprintf("user_%d", rand.Int()),
EmailAddress: fmt.Sprintf("user_%d@example.com", rand.Int()),
Alias: wrapperspb.String("John Doe"),
}
}
```