Protobuf timestamp not found

Question

Relatively new to GRPC and getting an error in my proto file that I cannot seem to make sense of. I would like to send a time in a message using the "google.protobuf.Timestamp". I cannot seem to import it. What am I doing wrong?

    syntax = "proto3";

    import "google/protobuf/timestamp.proto";

    service ProfileService {
        rpc ConstructProfileStructFromUser (ConstructProfileStructFromUserRequest) returns (ConstructProfileStructFromUserResponse);
    }

    message ConstructProfileStructFromUserRequest {
        string transactionID    = 1;
        string User         = 2;
    }

    message ConstructProfileStructFromUserResponse {
        string UID = 1;
        string ContactEmail = 2;
        google.protobuf.Timestamp DateOfBirth = 3;
    }

Both in my IDE and my compiler (using the below command) then I get the error

google/protobuf/timestamp.proto: File not found.
profile.proto: Import "google/protobuf/timestamp.proto" was not found or had errors.
profile.proto:21:5: "google.protobuf.Timestamp" is not defined.

Command to run:

protoc -I profile/ profile/profile.proto --go_out=plugins=grpc:profile

Protoc --version

libprotoc 3.0.0

Answer 1

I had this issue - I had installed thr protoc compiler using the apt package manager (ubuntu) and it put the protoc compiler in somewhere like /usr/local/bin it seems by default protoc expects and required imports to be present in an include path relative to this .e.g. /usr/local/bin/include/* next to /usr/local/bin/protoc.

To fix I removed the installed version with apt and downloaded the latest release from the github page - github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases look for the protoc download for your os/arch (e.g protoc-3.13.0-linux-x86_64.zip) this download has the required include (in the inlcude folder). Just place the include folder next to the binary in your PATH.