Message

A message defines an indexed aggregation of fields containing typed values, each of which may be absent. It might correspond to something like a class in Java, or a JSON object.

message Song {
    1 -> string title;
    2 -> uint16 year;
}

In the binary representation of a message, the message is prefixed with its length, and each field is prefixed with its index.

It is okay to add fields to a message with new indices later — in fact, this is the whole point of message. When an unrecognized field index is encountered in the process of decoding a message, it is skipped over. This allows for compatibility with versions of your app that use an older version of the schema.