Is there a standard mapping between JSON and Protocol Buffers?

Question

From a comment on the announcement blog post:

Regarding JSON: JSON is structured similarly to Protocol Buffers, but protocol buffer binary format

Answer 1

One further thought: if protobuf objects have getters/setters, or appropriately named fields, one could simply use Jackson JSON processor's data binding. By default it handles public getters, any setters and public fields, but these are just default visibility levels and can be changed. If so, Jackson can serialize/deserialize protobuf generated POJOs without problems.

I have actually used this approach with Thrift-generated objects; the only thing I had to configure there was to disable serialization of various "isXXX()" methods that Thrift adds for checking if a field has been explicitly assigned or not.