[infinispan-dev] HotRodMarshaller interface

[Manik Surtani]

Guys,

I just created ISPN-532 (HotRodMarshaller needs cleaning up) targeted for Radegast CR2 and Final.  I know it is late in the day to be making API changes in an interface, but I would much rather this is done right prior to being baked into Final and hence eternity.  :)

	http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/Infinispan/trunk/client/hotrod-client/src/main/java/org/infinispan/client/hotrod/HotRodMarshaller.java?r=1850

So I have 3 issues to address with this interface.

1.  Methods on the interface

The purpose of this is simple: the 2 methods, readObject() and marshallObject() are meant to perform diametrically opposed tasks (byte[] -> object in one case, object -> byte[] in the other) but the names are far from that.

I propose either of the following:

	1) readObject() and writeObject()
	2) Simply, read() and write()
	3) Or if we want to follow org.infinispan.marshall.Marshaller conventions, objectFromByteBuffer(), objectToByteBuffer()

My preference would be (3).


2.  Interface name and package

Further, any reason why we call this HotRodMarshaller?  Isn't it just a marshaller that serializes arbitrary objects <--> byte[] and should contain no HotRod-specific logic?  I can see why we did not use the org.infinispan.marshall.Marshaller interface for this (too complex?) but perhaps we could create a org.infinispan.marshall.BasicMarshaller which just contains objectFromByteBuffer() and objectToByteBuffer(), and Marshaller can extend BasicMarshaller for Infinispan's internals and HotRod clients can directly implement BasicMarshaller?

This would allow people who write custom marshallers to reuse them for both the HotRod client as well as for Infinispan's internal marshalling.

3.  isKeyHint parameter on marshallObject()

What is this for?  And surely there is a more elegant/generic way to achieve this?  

Cheers
Manik

--
Manik Surtani
manik at jboss.org
Lead, Infinispan
Lead, JBoss Cache
http://www.infinispan.org
http://www.jbosscache.org