Customizing Serialization with Class Pattern Strings

This topic explains how to customize serialization with class patter strings in VMware Tanzu GemFire.

Use class pattern strings to name the classes that you want to serialize using Tanzu GemFire’s reflection-based autoserializer and to specify object identity fields and to specify fields to exclude from serialization.

The class pattern strings used to configured the ReflectionBasedAutoSerializer are standard regular expressions. For example, this expression would select all classes defined in the com.company.domain package and its subpackages:

com\.company\.domain\..*

You can augment the pattern strings with a special notation to define fields to exclude from serialization and to define fields to mark as PDX identity fields. The full syntax of the pattern string is:

<class pattern> [# (identity|exclude) = <field pattern>]... [, <class pattern>...]

The following example pattern string sets these PDX serialization criteria:

• Classes with names matching the pattern com.company.DomainObject.* are serialized. In those classes, fields beginning with id are marked as identity fields and fields named creationDate are not serialized.
• The class com.company.special.Patient is serialized. In the class, the field, ssn is marked as an identity field

com.company.DomainObject.*#identity=id.*#exclude=creationDate, 
com.company.special.Patient#identity=ssn

Note: There is no association between the identity and exclude options, so the pattern above could also be expressed as:

com.company.DomainObject.*#identity=id.*, com.company.DomainObject.*#exclude=creationDate, 
com.company.special.Patient#identity=ssn

Note: The order of the patterns is not relevant. All defined class patterns are used when determining whether a field should be considered as an identity field or should be excluded.

Examples:

• This XML uses the example pattern shown above:

  <parameter name="classes">
    <string>com.company.DomainObject.*#identity=id.*#exclude=creationDate, 
  com.company.special.Patient#identity=ssn</string>
  </parameter>
  

• This application code sets the same pattern:

  classPatterns.add("com.company.DomainObject.*#identity=id.*#exclude=creationDate,
     com.company.special.Patient#identity=ssn");
  

• This application code has the same effect:

  Cache c = new CacheFactory().set("cache-xml-file", cacheXmlFileName)
    .setPdxSerializer(new ReflectionBasedAutoSerializer("com.foo.DomainObject*#identity=id.*",
    "com.company.DomainObject.*#exclude=creationDate","com.company.special.Patient#identity=ssn"))
    .create();