Bio Objects

Bio Objects is a library which can be used as a replacement for Java Beans only by extends BioObject class. Bio Dictionary is built based on @annotations or xml configuration and stores each field as a tag.

Features

• Easily customizable by adding new keys to map, without changing your code.
• Fast and efficient serialization/deserialization
• Binary compression and encryption after serialization
• Easy XML mapping from/to XML file
• Easy JSON mapping from/to JSON file
• Additional operations on Map such as trim(), clone(), format(), fill() (see below for details)
• Immutability support
• Fast Expression Language evaluation (10x faster than SpEL)

Bio Objects are easy solution where Model objects are changed frequently and developers don't want to change main code each time. Also it contains some additional functionalities which are very helpful.

@BioObj
public class Vehicle extends BioObject {
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION = "year_of_production" ;
  @BioTag(type="String")
  public static final String PRODUCER = "producer" ;
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String ENGINE = "engine" ;
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String CYLINDERS = "cylinders" ;
  @BioTag(type="Double")
  public static final String FUEL_EFFICIENCY = "fuel_efficiency" ;
}

Here we annotate a class Vehicle which extends BioObject by annotation @BioObj and also we annotate its fields which will be used in serialization, xml/json mapping, formatting etc. by annotation @BioTag.

First of all we need to create dictionary which is done by following code. Bio Dictionary finds all annotated classes and fields and give them an id(or code). This code is being used during serialization instead of serializing String names.

 new BioDictionaryBuilder().build(); 

also you can specify package root for Bio Objects traversal.

new BioDictionaryBuilder().addPackage("com.linkedlogics.bio.test").build();

After dictionary is created you can instantiate your objects either by default constructor

Vehicle v = new Vehicle() ;

or by dictionary factory methods

Vehicle v = BioDictionary.getDictionary().getFactory().newBioObject(Vehicle.class) ;

Difference is in that second method will use latest concrete class in the classpath which extends Vehicle and adds some more tags. If you use first method you will get an instance of exact Vehicle class.

Setters and Getters

Bio Object provides default set and casted get methods already. For example:

v.set(Vehicle.PRODUCER, "Ford") ;
v.set(Vehicle.YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION, 2019) ;
v.set(Vehicle.FUEL_EFFICIENCY, 17.8) ;
v.set("undefined tag", "Hello world") ;

v.getString(Vehicle.PRODUCER) ;
v.getInt(Vehicle.YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION) ;
v.getDouble(Vehicle.FUEL_EFFICIENCY) ;
v.get("undefined tag") ;

or you can still write standard setter/getters as following:

@BioObj
public class Vehicle extends BioObject {
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION = "year_of_production" ;
  @BioTag(type="String")
  public static final String PRODUCER = "producer" ;
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String ENGINE = "engine" ;
  @BioTag(type="Integer")
  public static final String CYLINDERS = "cylinders" ;
  @BioTag(type="Double")
  public static final String FUEL_EFFICIENCY = "fuel_efficiency" ;
  
  public void setProducer(String producer) {
    set(PRODUCER, producer) ;
  }

  public String getProducer() {
    return getString(Vehicle.PRODUCER) ;
  }

  public void setYearOfProduction(int yearOfProduction) {
    set(YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION, yearOfProduction) ;
  }
  
  public in getYearOfProduction() {
    return getInt(Vehicle.YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION) ;
  }
}

Serialization/Deserialization

In order to serialize/deserialize Bio Objects you need to use to BioObjectBinaryParser class. Here is an example:

 BioObjectBinaryParser parser = new BioObjectBinaryParser() ;
 
 byte[] encoded = parser.encode(v) ;
 
 Vehicle decoded = (Vehicle) parser.decode(encoded) ;

This serialization/deserialization is way to fast than standard Java serialization because it only serializes data and field codes. Bio Object codes must be unique within one dictionary (you can have multiple dictionaries at the same time) and tag codes must be unique within single Bio Object. By default Bio Dictionary uses standard hashing to assign default codes but it is possible that there can be duplicates. For that purpose you can also assign custom codes inside annotations @BioObj and @BioTag for each object and tag. For example:

@BioObj(code=1)
public class Vehicle extends BioObject {
     @BioTag(code=1, type="Integer")
     public static final String YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION = "year_of_production" ;
     @BioTag(code=2, type="String")
     public static final String PRODUCER = "producer" ;
     @BioTag(code=3, type="Integer")
     public static final String ENGINE = "engine" ;
     @BioTag(code=4, type="Integer")
     public static final String CYLINDERS = "cylinders" ;
}

also by adding dictionary code to @BioObj you can differentiate Bio Objects based on whole dictionary.

@BioObj(code=1, dictionary=3)
public class Vehicle extends BioObject { ... }

XML parsing and export

It is very easy to export Bio Object to xml and also parse it from XML. You don't have to do anything additional. For exporting you can use toXml() method in BioObject which is inherited.

System.out.println(v.toXml()) ;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<vehicle type="Vehicle" code="1">
    <fuel-efficiency type="Double">17.8</fuel-efficiency>
    <producer type="String">Ford</producer>
    <undefined-tag type="String">Hello world</undefined-tag>
    <year-of-production type="Integer">2019</year-of-production>
</vehicle>

Each root tag in XML starts with name (vehicle) field and followed by attributes about its type (Vehicle) and code (1).

• name is by default snake case of class name it is commonly used in Bio Expressions
• type is by default class name it is commonly used in Bio Dictionary for dependencies between Bio Objects
• code is by default hash generated or can be given inside annotation, it is used in serialization/deserialization

In order to parse XML to Bio Object you have to use BioObjectXmlParser class in below way.

BioObjectXmlParser xmlParser = new BioObjectXmlParser() ;
Vehicle v = (Vehicle) xmlParser.parse(new FileInputStream("vehicle.xml")) ;

Another way of parsing from XML is to use a static method fromXml(String xml) inside BioObject class. For example:

Vehicle v = (Vehicle) BioObject.fromXml(xml) ;

JSON parsing and export

For exporting to JSON you should use toJson() method and for parsing from JSON you can use static BioObject.fromJson(String json) method. toJson() method returns a org.json.JSONObject instance

System.out.println(v.toJson().toString(4)) ;

{
    "fuel_efficiency": 17.8,
    "undefined tag": "Hello world",
    "producer": "Ford",
    "year_of_production": 2019
}

Aditional methods from BioObject

trim()

trim() method removes all keys which are not found in the dictionary. For example:

v.set(Vehicle.PRODUCER, "Ford") ;
v.set(Vehicle.YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION, 2019) ;
v.set(Vehicle.FUEL_EFFICIENCY, 17.8) ;
v.set("undefined tag", "Hello world") ;

"undefined tag" tag will be removed when you call v.trim()

format()

trim() method converts inappropriate values to correct types based on dictionary. If a tag is Integer but inside Bio Object it is a String ("42") it will be converted to int 42. It is applied to all primitive types and arrays of primitive types. For example:

v.set(Vehicle.PRODUCER, "Ford") ;
v.set(Vehicle.YEAR_OF_PRODUCTION, "2019") ;
v.set(Vehicle.FUEL_EFFICIENCY, "17.8") ;
v.set("undefined tag", "Hello world") ;

v.format() ;
System.out.println(v.toXml());

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<vehicle type="Vehicle" code="1">
    <fuel-efficiency type="Double">17.8</fuel-efficiency>
    <producer type="String">Ford</producer>
    <undefined-tag type="String">Hello world</undefined-tag>
    <year-of-production type="Integer">2019</year-of-production>
</vehicle>

clone() and equals()

clone() method returns completely new instance but with same tag values. equals() is comparing all tag values for equality.

Vehicle clonned = (Vehicle) v.clone() ;
System.out.println(clonned.equals(v)) ;

setImmutable()

setImmutable() sets object to be immutable. No further set, remove or clear will be possible.