Hi Erik Erik Beeson wrote: > We use XStream to do all of our serialization, so we get to switch > between XML and JSON for free, which is really nice. I've been considering XStream so it's great to hear that it's working for you, especially regarding JSON. > Our containers end up really cluttered with a lot of XStream related > annotations (mainly @XStreamAlias and @XStreamImplicit), so separating > them helps keep the data POJOs much cleaner. > This is why I've never been that keen on annotations. Keeping this information external to the POJO would leave them suitable for use in a client API as Vincent suggests. > I see places where we could merge some of the POJOs (like make > incoming and data object the same above), and I see ways that we could > use even more annotations and merge them all into one, but we don't > for a few reasons: It would make for much uglier code, this allows > different developers to work on different aspects of the pipeline > without having to worry about stepping on toes, My incoming/outgoing representations are generally the same because they support a GET - modify PUT cycle. But I'll bear this in mind. > and we feel like it's safer since we're never inputting or outputting > our actual data objects. That means it's harder for us to accidentally > output a field that we shouldn't, and we don't have to worry so much > about asserting which fields we can allow incoming data to write to. > Spot on. I'd been struggling to put that into words. > Plus, our data is pretty straight forward (not a lot of nesting), and > there aren't that many data objects (less than a dozen), so the > benefits are worth putting up with a little bit more code. > How are you handling circular references/normalization in JSON? My prototype uses flat structures and uses the business keys to resolve references on the client-side (javascript). But I've noted techniques for serializing denormalized/circular JSON (e.g. http://www.jspon.org/#JSPON%20Core%20Spec). Have you formed a view? > Good luck with your setup. I'd be interested to hear what you end up > deciding on. There is lots to think about here. Will keep you posted.
Best regards Richard
