title: creating a python dictionary like object from protocol buffers for use in pandas
body: <p>I currently interface to a server that provides protocol buffers.  I can potentially receive a very large number of messages.  Currently my process to read the protocol buffers and convert them to a Pandas DataFrame (not a necessary step in general, but Pandas offers nice tools for analyzing datasets) is:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Read protocol buffer, it will be a google protobuf object</li>
  <li>Convert protocol buffers to dictionary using <a href="https://github.com/benhodgson/protobuf-to-dict" rel="noreferrer">protobuf_to_dict</a></li>
  <li>use <code>pandas.DataFrame.from_records</code> to get a DataFrame</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>This works great, but, given the large number of messages I read from the protobuf, it is quite inefficient to convert to dictionary and then to pandas.  My question is: is it possible to make a class that can make a python protobuf object look like a dictionary?  That is, remove step 2.  Any references or pseudocode would be helpful.</p>