Chapter 16. Serialization

Serialization is a process of converting an object into a binary format, which can be persisted in a database or transmitted over a network. Deserialization is a process of creating an object from binary format. In SwitchYard, the process of serialization is a concern in case of clustering and execution from a client invoker. In such cases, SwitchYard uses objects that represent the content of a SwitchYard Message or objects that are placed within a SwitchYard Exchange's Context, for serialization and deserialization.

Custom (application-defined) objects that are stored as the content of the message or property of the exchange context, are not required to implement java.io.Serializable. This is because SwitchYard does not use the JDK's default object serialization mechanism. It traverses the object graph, extracting the properties along the way, and stores the values in its own graph representation, which by default is serialized to/from the JSON format. For this to work, custom objects must follow one of the following two rules:

The org.switchyard.serial.graph package provides the following annotations, enums, interface and class:

You can implement Serialization using Serializers from the SerializerFactory. Although it is not recommended to use SwitchYard's serialization API directly, however, if you need to use it, here is an example of Serializer.create invocation: Out of the box, the available FormatTypes are SER_OBJECT, XML_BEAN and JSON, and the available CompressionTypes are GZIP, ZIP, or null (for no compression).