The capnp Tool

Cap’n Proto comes with a command-line tool called capnp intended to aid development and debugging. This tool can be used to:

• Compile Cap’n Proto schemas to produce source code in multiple languages.
• Generate unique type IDs.
• Decode Cap’n Proto messages to human-readable text.
• Encode text representations of Cap’n Proto messages to binary.
• Evaluate and extract constants defined in Cap’n Proto schemas.

This page summarizes the functionality. A complete reference on the command’s usage can be found by typing:

capnp help

Compiling Schemas

capnp compile -oc++ myschema.capnp

This generates files myschema.capnp.h and myschema.capnp.c++ which contain C++ source code corresponding to the types defined in myschema.capnp. Options exist to control output location and import paths.

The above example generates C++ code, but the tool is able to generate output in any language for which a plugin is available. Compiler plugins are just regular programs named capnpc-language. For example, the above command runs capnpc-c++. More on how to write compiler plugins.

Note that some Cap’n Proto implementations (especially for interpreted languages) do not require generating source code.

Decoding Messages

capnp decode myschema.capnp MyType < message.bin > message.txt

capnp decode reads a binary Cap’n Proto message from standard input and decodes it to a human-readable text format (specifically, the format used for specifying constants and default values in the schema language). By default it expects an unpacked message, but you can decode a packed message with the --packed flag.

Encoding Messages

capnp encode myschema.capnp MyType < message.txt > message.bin

capnp encode is the opposite of capnp decode: it takes a text-format message on stdin and encodes it to binary (possibly packed, with the --packed flag).

This is mainly useful for debugging purposes, to build test data or to apply tweaks to data decoded with capnp decode. You should not rely on capnp encode for encoding data written and maintained in text format long-term – instead, use capnp eval, which is much more powerful.

Evaluating Constants

capnp eval myschema.capnp myConstant

This prints the value of myConstant, a const declaration, after applying variable substitution. It can also output the value in binary format (--binary or --packed).

At first glance, this may seem no more interesting than capnp encode: the syntax used to define constants in schema files is the same as the format accepted by capnp encode, right? There is, however, a big difference: constants in schema files may be defined in terms of other constants, which may even be imported from other files.

As a result, capnp eval is a great basis for implementing config files. For example, a large company might maintain a production server that serves dozens of clients and needs configuration information about each one. Rather than maintaining the config as one enormous file, it can be written as several separate files with a master file that imports the rest.

Such a configuration should be compiled to binary format using capnp eval before deployment, in order to verify that there are no errors and to make deployment easier and faster. While you could technically ship the text configs to production and have the servers parse them directly (e.g. with capnp::SchemaParser), encoding before deployment is more efficient and robust.