2.6 KiB
API style guidelines
Generally follow guidance at https://cloud.google.com/apis/design/, in particular for proto3 as described at:
- https://cloud.google.com/apis/design/proto3
- https://cloud.google.com/apis/design/naming_convention
- https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/style
In addition, the following conventions should be followed:
-
For protos that are frozen, the following guidelines are followed:
- Fields should not be renumbered or have their types changed. This is standard proto development procedure.
- Fields should not be renamed. This is stricter than standard proto development procedure in the sense that it does not break binary wire format. However, it does break loading of YAML/JSON into protos as well as text protos. Since we consider YAML/JSON to be first class inputs, we must not change field names.
- If fields are deleted, the following syntax should be put in their place:
reserved <field index>;
E.g.,
reserved 15;
-
The data plane APIs are primarily intended for machine generation and consumption. It is expected that the management server is responsible for mapping higher level configuration concepts to concrete API concepts. Similarly, static configuration fragments may be generated by tools and UIs, etc. The APIs and tools used to generate xDS configuration are beyond the scope of the definitions in this repository.
-
Use wrapped scalar types where there is a real need for the field to have a default value that does not match the proto3 defaults (0/false/""). This should not be done for fields where the proto3 defaults make sense. All things being equal, pick appropriate logic, e.g. enable vs. disable for a
bool
field, such that the proto3 defaults work, but only where this doesn't result in API gymnastics. -
Always use plural field names for
repeated
fields, such asfilters
. -
Always use upper camel case names for message types and enum types without embedded acronyms, such as
HttpRequest
. -
Prefer
oneof
selections to boolean overloads of fields, for example, prefer:oneof path_secifier { string simple_path = 1; string regex_path = 2; }
to
string path = 1; bool path_is_regex = 2;
This is more efficient, extendable and self-describing.
-
To represent percentage values, use the Percent message type defined in api/base.proto.