Why Protobuf for SDUI?
Server-Driven UI (SDUI) systems rely on a backend sending a tree of UI components that the client renders dynamically. Most implementations use JSON as the transport format. While JSON is human-readable and flexible, it comes with performance costs that matter in mobile environments: verbose payloads, ambiguous types, and expensive parsing.
Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) offers a strongly-typed, binary-serialized alternative that dramatically reduces payload size and parsing time — both critical for SDUI, where every screen load depends on downloading and processing a component tree.
This document presents a proven approach to adopting Protobuf for SDUI, including schema design, migration strategies, and real benchmark data.
Key Advantages
