[DISCUSS][JAVA] Generating toBytes/fromBytes methods?

[Niels Basjes]

Hi,

I'm working on a project where I'm putting Avro records into Kafka and at
the other end pull them out again.
For that purpose I wrote two methods 'toBytes' and 'fromBytes' in a
separate class (see below).

I see this as the type of problem many developers run into.
Would it be a good idea to generate methods like these into the generated
Java code?

This would make it possible to serialize and deserialize singles records
like this:

byte [] someBytes = measurement.toBytes();
Measurement m = Measurement.fromBytes(someBytes);

Niels Basjes

P.S. possibly not name it toBytes but getBytes (similar to what the String
class has)

public final class MeasurementSerializer {
    private MeasurementSerializer() {
    }

    public static Measurement fromBytes(byte[] bytes) throws IOException {
        try {
            DatumReader<Measurement> reader = new
SpecificDatumReader<>(Measurement.getClassSchema());
            Decoder decoder = DecoderFactory.get().binaryDecoder(bytes, null);
            return reader.read(null, decoder);
        } catch (RuntimeException rex) {
            throw new IOException(rex.getMessage());
        }
    }

    public static byte[] toBytes(Measurement measurement) throws IOException {
        try {
            ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            Encoder encoder = EncoderFactory.get().binaryEncoder(out, null);
            SpecificDatumWriter<Measurement> writer = new
SpecificDatumWriter<>(Measurement.class);
            writer.write(measurement, encoder);
            encoder.flush();
            out.close();
            return out.toByteArray();
        } catch (RuntimeException rex) {
            throw new IOException(rex.getMessage());
        }
    }
}



-- 
Best regards / Met vriendelijke groeten,

Niels Basjes