Serialization framework

[NiteshKant]

This is a blanket issue for serialization/deserialization.

[spencergibb]

Anything I can do to help here? I'd like to integrate https://github.com/Netflix/ribbon 2.0 into https://github.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-netflix/ but ribbon 2.0 is waiting on serialization in RxNetty.

[NiteshKant]

@spencergibb we are still discussing the design and feature of the serialization support for RxNetty from Netflix's perspective. Once the thoughts are a bit more concrete, I intent to create issues here that can be discussed. I hope that will give you more context on what we are trying to achieve and hence will be more fruitful if you wish to contribute.

BTW, when you say "ribbon 2.0 is waiting on serialization in RxNetty." you mean that ribbon can not be used for anything else but reading/writing ByteBuf, correct?

[spencergibb]

@NiteshKant thanks for the update. You are correct. In ribbon 2.0 there in an exception thrown in HttpRequest.java#L90 if the RibbonResponse type is anything other than ByteBuf.

I'd be interested in the plugability of the API. With Feign I was able to plug into Spring's MessageConverter framework. See SpringDecoder.java and SpringEncoder.java for examples.

It seems like the Ribbon 2.0 annotations would replace Feign (for our purposes), which is why I was interested and bubbled this up.

I see there is a framework for transforming content into a ByteBuf in ContentTransformer. Would this new framework be the opposite, taking a ByteBuf and returning an arbitrary Object?

[NiteshKant]

At Netflix we have decided to move serialization/deserialization out of the scope of RxNetty as it can easily be layered on top. Moreover, there is less value in standardizing the formats as YMMV!

Closing this issue now.