---
# System prepended metadata

title: Protocol Documentation - Any
tags: [Client library]

---

---
tags: Client library
order: 1
---

# Protocol Documentation - Any
<a name="top"></a>

## Table of Contents

- [any.proto](#any.proto)
    - [Any](#google.protobuf.Any)

- [Scalar Value Types](#scalar-value-types)



<a name="any.proto"></a>
<p align="right"><a href="#top">Top</a></p>

## any.proto



<a name="google.protobuf.Any"></a>

### Any
`Any` contains an arbitrary serialized protocol buffer message along with a
URL that describes the type of the serialized message.

Protobuf library provides support to pack/unpack Any values in the form
of utility functions or additional generated methods of the Any type.

Example 1: Pack and unpack a message in C&#43;&#43;.

    Foo foo = ...;
    Any any;
    any.PackFrom(foo);
    ...
    if (any.UnpackTo(&amp;foo)) {
      ...
    }

Example 2: Pack and unpack a message in Java.

    Foo foo = ...;
    Any any = Any.pack(foo);
    ...
    if (any.is(Foo.class)) {
      foo = any.unpack(Foo.class);
    }

 Example 3: Pack and unpack a message in Python.

    foo = Foo(...)
    any = Any()
    any.Pack(foo)
    ...
    if any.Is(Foo.DESCRIPTOR):
      any.Unpack(foo)
      ...

 Example 4: Pack and unpack a message in Go

     foo := &amp;pb.Foo{...}
     any, err := anypb.New(foo)
     if err != nil {
       ...
     }
     ...
     foo := &amp;pb.Foo{}
     if err := any.UnmarshalTo(foo); err != nil {
       ...
     }

The pack methods provided by protobuf library will by default use
&#39;type.googleapis.com/full.type.name&#39; as the type URL and the unpack
methods only use the fully qualified type name after the last &#39;/&#39;
in the type URL, for example &#34;foo.bar.com/x/y.z&#34; will yield type
name &#34;y.z&#34;.


JSON
====
The JSON representation of an `Any` value uses the regular
representation of the deserialized, embedded message, with an
additional field `@type` which contains the type URL. Example:

    package google.profile;
    message Person {
      string first_name = 1;
      string last_name = 2;
    }

    {
      "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.profile.Person",
      "firstName": <string>;,
      "lastName": <string>;
    }

If the embedded message type is well-known and has a custom JSON
representation, that representation will be embedded adding a field
`value` which holds the custom JSON in addition to the `@type`
field. Example (for message [google.protobuf.Duration][]):

    {
      "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.protobuf.Duration",
      "value": "1.212s"
    }


| Field | Type | Label | Description |
| ----- | ---- | ----- | ----------- |
| type_url | [string](#string) |  | A URL/resource name that uniquely identifies the type of the serialized protocol buffer message. This string must contain at least one &#34;/&#34; character. The last segment of the URL&#39;s path must represent the fully qualified name of the type (as in `path/google.protobuf.Duration`). The name should be in a canonical form (e.g., leading &#34;.&#34; is not accepted).

In practice, teams usually precompile into the binary all types that they expect it to use in the context of Any. However, for URLs which use the scheme `http`, `https`, or no scheme, one can optionally set up a type server that maps type URLs to message definitions as follows:

* If no scheme is provided, `https` is assumed. * An HTTP GET on the URL must yield a [google.protobuf.Type][] value in binary format, or produce an error. * Applications are allowed to cache lookup results based on the URL, or have them precompiled into a binary to avoid any lookup. Therefore, binary compatibility needs to be preserved on changes to types. (Use versioned type names to manage breaking changes.)

Note: this functionality is not currently available in the official protobuf release, and it is not used for type URLs beginning with type.googleapis.com.

Schemes other than `http`, `https` (or the empty scheme) might be used with implementation specific semantics. |
| value | [bytes](#bytes) |  | Must be a valid serialized protocol buffer of the above specified type. |















## Scalar Value Types

| .proto Type | Notes | C++ | Java | Python | Go | C# | PHP | Ruby |
| ----------- | ----- | --- | ---- | ------ | -- | -- | --- | ---- |
| <a name="double" /> double |  | double | double | float | float64 | double | float | Float |
| <a name="float" /> float |  | float | float | float | float32 | float | float | Float |
| <a name="int32" /> int32 | Uses variable-length encoding. Inefficient for encoding negative numbers – if your field is likely to have negative values, use sint32 instead. | int32 | int | int | int32 | int | integer | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="int64" /> int64 | Uses variable-length encoding. Inefficient for encoding negative numbers – if your field is likely to have negative values, use sint64 instead. | int64 | long | int/long | int64 | long | integer/string | Bignum |
| <a name="uint32" /> uint32 | Uses variable-length encoding. | uint32 | int | int/long | uint32 | uint | integer | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="uint64" /> uint64 | Uses variable-length encoding. | uint64 | long | int/long | uint64 | ulong | integer/string | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="sint32" /> sint32 | Uses variable-length encoding. Signed int value. These more efficiently encode negative numbers than regular int32s. | int32 | int | int | int32 | int | integer | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="sint64" /> sint64 | Uses variable-length encoding. Signed int value. These more efficiently encode negative numbers than regular int64s. | int64 | long | int/long | int64 | long | integer/string | Bignum |
| <a name="fixed32" /> fixed32 | Always four bytes. More efficient than uint32 if values are often greater than 2^28. | uint32 | int | int | uint32 | uint | integer | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="fixed64" /> fixed64 | Always eight bytes. More efficient than uint64 if values are often greater than 2^56. | uint64 | long | int/long | uint64 | ulong | integer/string | Bignum |
| <a name="sfixed32" /> sfixed32 | Always four bytes. | int32 | int | int | int32 | int | integer | Bignum or Fixnum (as required) |
| <a name="sfixed64" /> sfixed64 | Always eight bytes. | int64 | long | int/long | int64 | long | integer/string | Bignum |
| <a name="bool" /> bool |  | bool | boolean | boolean | bool | bool | boolean | TrueClass/FalseClass |
| <a name="string" /> string | A string must always contain UTF-8 encoded or 7-bit ASCII text. | string | String | str/unicode | string | string | string | String (UTF-8) |
| <a name="bytes" /> bytes | May contain any arbitrary sequence of bytes. | string | ByteString | str | []byte | ByteString | string | String (ASCII-8BIT) |