8.2. VFS Architecture

While the public API is quite intuitive, real implementation details add complexity. Some concepts need to be explained in more detail.

Each time you create a VFS instance, its matching VFSContext instance is created. This creation is done via VFSContextFactory. Different protocols map to different VFSContextFactory instances. For example, file/vfsfile maps to FileSystemContextFactory, while zip/vfszip maps to ZipEntryContextFactory.

Each time a VirtualFile instance is created, its matching VirtualFileHandler is created. This VirtualFileHandler instance knows how to handle different resource types properly; the VirtualFile API only delegates invocations to its VirtualFileHandler reference.

The VFSContext instance knows how to create VirtualFileHandler instances accordingly to a resource type. For example, ZipEntryContextFactory creates ZipEntryContext, which then creates ZipEntryHandler.