A library to encode and decode messages in various formats where messages are defined as plain old java objects. Java 7 is required for version 2.x and Java 8 is required for version 3.x (latest).

Given a POJO:

public class Hello extends MsgObject {
    /** The greeting. */
    @Required
    public String greeting;
    public Hello() {}
    public Hello(String greeting) {
        this.greeting = greeting;
    }
}

We can generate a Blink message like this:

Schema schema = new SchemaBuilder().build(Hello.class);
MsgCodec codec = new BlinkCodecFactory(schema).createCodec();

Hello msg = new Hello("hello world");
ByteArrayOutputStream bout = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
codec.encode(msg, bout);

...and decode it back to an object like this:

Hello decoded = (Hello) codec.decode(new ByteArrayInputStream(bout.toByteArray()));
System.out.println(decoded.greeting.equals(msg.greeting) + " = true");

Note that the same schema can be used with another encoder to produce for example JSON messages. See javadoc and examples for more information.

To use msgcodec you will need to include the artifacts in the group=com.cinnober.msgcodec; msgcodec and msgcodec-{format} in your application's runtime. Format is one of xml, json or blink.

The versions of the artifacts follows semantic versioning, which means that a minor version upgrade is always backwards compatible.

In a gradle project one would include the libs in dependencies section of your build.gradle file (replace {version} with the appropriate current release). Example for a project that uses the Blink encoding format:

dependencies {
    compile group: 'com.cinnober.msgcodec', name: 'msgcodec', version: '{version}'
    compile group: 'com.cinnober.msgcodec', name: 'msgcodec-blink', version: '{version}'
}

The code is divided into the following projects:

• msgcodec: contains annotations etc required for defining messages and protocols
• msgcodec-json: JSON codec
• msgcodec-xml: XML codec
• msgcodec-blink: Blink (compact format) codec
• msgcodec-javadoc: Javadoc doclet for extracting javadoc comments from messages.
• msgcodec-examples: Examples of how to use msgcodec.

# First clone a copy of the repo:
git clone git@github.com:cinnober/msgcodec.git
cd msgcodec

# Compile, build and test:
gradle build

If you want to edit java files from within eclipse, run gradle eclipse

and then from within eclipse File -> Import... -> General -> Existing projects into workspace -> Next.. Browse.. browse to where you cloned repo -> Ok.. -> Select All -> Import.

Install the Netbeans Gradle Plugin and just open the project (the cloned repo).

See the javadoc of msgcodec. To build the javadoc run: gradle javadoc

The result ends up in msgcodec/build/docs/javadoc/.

See msgcodec-examples for example usage of msgcodec.

Versions are stored as annotated tags in git. Semantic versioning is used.

To create a new release, e.g. 1.2.3:

git tag -a 1.2.3 -m "New release"
git push --tags

If changes are made after version 1.2.3 then the version number be '1.3.0-SNAPSHOT' (default a minor change).

To upload the archives to the Maven Central (through the OSSRH), run:

gradle clean build uploadArchives

Note that credentials are required for uploads. They should be placed in e.g. your ~/.gradle/gradle.properties for uploadArchives. See gradle.properties for more information.