[infinispan-dev] Generalizing Externalizer interface

[Galder Zamarreño]

As part of https://jira.jboss.org/browse/ISPN-246, we're gonna be making Externalizer interface (http://docs.jboss.org/infinispan/4.2/apidocs/org/infinispan/marshall/Externalizer.html) even more public allowing users to provide their own externalizer implementations. 

I had a brief scan and it seems like (or so should be unless it's a very strange externalizer), that all Externalizers are symmetric. IOW, whatever type the writeObject() object is passed, that's the type we return in readObject(). So, I was thinking of generalizing Externalizer to look something like this:

interface Externalizer<T> {
   
   void writeObject(ObjectOutput output, T object) throws IOException;
   
   T readObject(ObjectInput input) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException;

}

Does anyone have any objections? This would safe a lot of casting in implementations, making externalizers easier to code and type safer.

Cheers,

p.s. This would only be included in 5.x.
--
Galder Zamarreño
Sr. Software Engineer
Infinispan, JBoss Cache