TypeError: message.encode is not a function

[stephenplusplus]

This GCN Logging system test errors when using gRPC 1.3.0 (released yesterday):

  1) Logging logs should write a single entry to a log:
     TypeError: message.encode is not a function
      at BundleDescriptor.getByteLength [as byteLengthFunction] (node_modules\google-gax\lib\grpc.js:196:24)
      at node_modules\google-gax\lib\bundling.js:338:38
      at Array.forEach (native)
      at BundleExecutor.schedule (node_modules\google-gax\lib\bundling.js:337:16)
      at node_modules\google-gax\lib\bundling.js:474:20
      at Canceller.call (node_modules\google-gax\lib\api_callable.js:110:19)
      at Bundleable.call (node_modules\google-gax\lib\bundling.js:473:12)
      at node_modules\google-gax\lib\api_callable.js:361:17

[murgatroid99]

I know what caused this. The update of gRPC's dependency on ProtoBuf.js changed the types of the message classes exposed by grpc.load. The specific APIs of those classes were not intended to be part of the public stable interface.

Instead of explicitly calling their encode methods, I would recommend using the requestSerialize and responseSerialize functions exposed in the service definition objects.

[murgatroid99]

gRPC is going to switch its dependency on Protobuf.js back to version 5, which should fix this. That being said, you should still use requestSerialize and responseSerialize instead of encode. Those are guaranteed to be exactly the functions that gRPC uses for serialization.

[jmuk]

I really prefer to have protobuf.js version 6 if possible, mainly for the performance (and I've heard that protobufjs 6 supports google.protobuf.Any data type properly, which is beneficial to LRO types). If gax is the main reason for version 5, we need to fix gax side to support it.

cc @lukesneeringer

[murgatroid99]

You can see in the linked PR that there are a couple of other issues with other breakages that this change introduced. So I'm reversing it until I can be sure that I can make the change without breaking anything.

One option you have is to load the proto file using Protobuf.js 6 directly, then load that into gRPC using grpc.loadObject. That will still work.

[murgatroid99]

I have published grpc@1.3.1-pre1, which switches the dependency on Protobuf.js back to version 5. Can you verify that this library works with that?

[stephenplusplus]

I believe this has been solved.