Mouse Melon: Thé best software for editing Protocol Buffers data

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What is Mouse Melon?

Protocol Buffers is a free and open-source data format for serializing structured data, made by Google. It's a binary format, so you cannot open the data with a text editor, as you would do with a JSON or XML file.

Mouse Melon is a software application that lets you view and edit Protocol Buffers data. And it's the best you'll find. Every part of the application is thought through to make your job as easy as possible.

After selecting your .proto files, you can browse through your message types, read the comments that your wrote, open data files, interact with Protocol Buffers data on the clipboard, export data as JSON, and more.

“

Mouse Melon is very convenient and we use it very much. Thank you.

”

- Anonymous car manufacturer employee

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

  • Great user interface

    Clear, easy and fast

  • Desktop application

    No internet required

  • Cross-platform

    Works on Windows, Mac and Linux

  • Fully compatible

    Follows the standard exactly

  • High quality

    No known bugs

  • Free version available

    With limited functionality

Features

  • View and edit Protocol Buffers data

    Mouse Melon provides an easy to use and fool proof user interface for viewing and editing Protocol Buffers data in wire format. Files and clipboard data can be opened and edited.

    • Tab based interface for editing multiple files simultaneously.
    • Import/export hexadecimal encoded data
    • Import/export base-64 encoded data
    • Export in JSON (ProtoJSON) format
    • Unlimited undo/redo

  • Fully compatible with Protocol Buffers versions

    • Protocol Buffers version 2
    • Protocol Buffers version 3
    • Protocol Buffers edition 2023

  • Graceful handling of incorrect data

    • Unknown fields are displayed and will be preserved.
    • Warns when a required field (proto 2) is missing.
    • Warns when an enum field contains an unknown value.
    • Warns when a string is not UTF-8 encoded.
    • When any field cannot be parsed because of invalid data, the data is preserved and the rest of the file is still displayed.

  • Documentation viewer

    When editing Protocol Buffers data, the message definition and the comments in the .proto file will be displayed right next to the data. Your documentation is there when you need it.

    You can also easily browse throught all your defined messages, enums and gRPC methods.

  • Code generator

    Generate code for use in the application you're developing with just a few clicks. You can use one of the built-in languages (C++, C#, Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby and Rust) or use an other language by using plugins.

    The code generator uses protoc to do the actual work. In Mouse Melon you can see the input and output of the process.

  • Missing a feature?

    Features that will come later:

    • JSON import
    • gRPC client
    • gRPC eavesdropper

    If you would like any of those features, or any other feature, please tell us! Our users' wishes are our priority.

Also interesting: protodoc.io - Documentation of GitHub projects that use Protocol Buffers