Chapter 6. Protocol Interoperability

Configuring Data Grid to store data with a specific media type affects client interoperability.

Although REST clients do support sending and receiving encoded binary data, they are better at handling text formats such as JSON, XML, or plain text.

Memcached text clients can handle String-based keys and byte[] values but cannot negotiate data types with the server. These clients do not offer much flexibility when handling data formats because of the protocol definition.

Java Hot Rod clients are suitable for handling Java objects that represent entities that reside in the cache. Java Hot Rod clients use marshalling operations to serialize and deserialize those objects into byte arrays.

Similarly, non-Java Hot Rod clients, such as the C++, C#, and Javascript clients, are suitable for handling objects in the respective languages. However, non-Java Hot Rod clients can interoperate with Java Hot Rod clients using platform independent data formats.

You can configure key and values with a text-based storage format.

For example, specify text/plain; charset=UTF-8, or any other character set, to set plain text as the media type. You can also specify a media type for other text-based formats such as JSON (application/json) or XML (application/xml) with an optional character set.

The following example configures the cache to store entries with the text/plain; charset=UTF-8 media type:

<cache>
   <encoding>
      <key media-type="text/plain; charset=UTF-8"/>
      <value media-type="text/plain; charset=UTF-8"/>
   </encoding>
</cache>

To handle the exchange of data in a text-based format, you must configure Hot Rod clients with the org.infinispan.commons.marshall.StringMarshaller marshaller.

REST clients must also send the correct headers when writing and reading from the cache, as follows:

Memcached clients do not require any configuration to handle text-based formats.

If you store entries in the cache as marshalled, custom Java objects, you should configure the cache with the MediaType of the marshalled storage.

Java Hot Rod clients use the JBoss marshalling storage format as the default to store entries in the cache as custom Java objects.

The following example configures the cache to store entries with the application/x-jboss-marshalling media type:

<distributed-cache name="my-cache">
   <encoding>
      <key media-type="application/x-jboss-marshalling"/>
      <value media-type="application/x-jboss-marshalling"/>
   </encoding>
</distributed-cache>

If you use the Protostream marshaller, configure the MediaType as application/x-protostream. For UTF8Marshaller, configure the MediaType as text/plain.

Because REST clients are most suitable for handling text formats, you should use primitives such as java.lang.String for keys. Otherwise, REST clients must handle keys as bytes[] using a supported binary encoding.

REST clients can read values for cache entries in XML or JSON format. However, the classes must be available in the server.

To read and write data from Memcached clients, you must use java.lang.String for keys. Values are stored and returned as marshalled objects.

Some Java Memcached clients allow data transformers that marshall and unmarshall objects. You can also configure the Memcached server module to encode responses in different formats, such as 'JSON' which is language neutral. This allows non-Java clients to interact with the data even if the storage format for the cache is Java-specific.

Storing data in the cache as Protobuf encoded entries provides a platform independent configuration that enables Java and Non-Java clients to access and query the cache from any endpoint.

If indexing is configured for the cache, Data Grid automatically stores keys and values with the application/x-protostream media type.

If indexing is not configured for the cache, you can configure it to store entries with the application/x-protostream media type as follows:

<distributed-cache name="my-cache">
   <encoding>
      <key media-type="application/x-protostream"/>
      <value media-type="application/x-protostream"/>
   </encoding>
</distributed-cache>

Data Grid converts between application/x-protostream and application/json, which allows REST clients to read and write JSON formatted data. However REST clients must send the correct headers, as follows:

Read: Accept: application/json

Write: Content-Type: application/json

You can deploy custom code with Data Grid. For example, you can deploy scripts, tasks, listeners, converters, and merge policies. Because your custom code can access data directly in the cache, it must interoperate with clients that access data in the cache through different endpoints.

For example, you might create a remote task to handle custom objects stored in the cache while other clients store data in binary format.

To handle interoperability with custom code you can either convert data on demand or store data as Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs).

<distributed-cache name="my-cache">
   <encoding>
      <key media-type="application/x-java-object"/>
      <value media-type="application/x-java-object"/>
   </encoding>
</distributed-cache>

If you plan to store entries in the cache as custom Java objects or POJOs, you must deploy entity classes to Data Grid. Clients always exchange objects as bytes[]. The entity classes represent those custom objects so that Data Grid can serialize and deserialize them.

To make entity classes available to the server, do the following: