Chronicle-Values

Poor man's value types, Java 8+

Generation of constantly-sized flyweight accessors to Chronicle Bytes and simple bean-style on-heap implementations from interfaces. Interfaces, that could be processed by Chronicle-Values generation, are called value interfaces.

Project status: Alpha, the feature matrix (see below) is very wast and not fully implemented yet, please write the value interface according to the specification below, with the unit tests for your interface. If the generation from the value interface (according to spec) doesn't work, please report the case via issues on Github.

Contents

• Value interface specification
  • Supported field types
  • Supported methods
  • Table of supported methods (type of field × type of method)
  • Field configuration via annotations
• Use
• Javadocs

Value interface specification

An important pre-requirement for value interfaces: they should belong to some package with a non-empty name, not the default package.

Simple example:

package test;

interface Balance {
    long getDollars();
    void setDollars(long dollars);
    long addDollars(long addition);

    int getCents();
    void setCents(int cents);
}

is processed to either a flyweight of 12 bytes, or a bean class with long dollars; and int cents; fields.

Supported field types

All Java primitives

int, long, float, double, byte, boolean, char, short

String or CharSequence

Must be annotated with @MaxUtf8Length(), like:

interface Client {
    CharSequence getName();
    void setName(@MaxUtf8Length(20) CharSequence name);

    CharSequence getStateCode();
    void setStateCode(@NotNull @MaxUtf8Length(2) CharSequence stateCode);
}

Another value interface

This allows to build nested structures:

interface Point {
    double getX();
    void setX(double x);

    double getY();
    void setY(double y);
}

interface Circle {
    Point getCenter();
    void getUsingCenter(Point using);
    void setCenter(Point center);

    double getRadius();
    void setRadius(double radius);
}

Self-references are forbidden.

Any Java enum type

interface Order {
    enum State {NEW, CANCELLED, FILLED}

    State getState();
    void setState(@NotNull State state);
}

java.util.Date

Array fields

Of any of the above types, with special syntax: -At suffix and first parameter of all methods should be int index.

interface SomeStats {
    @Array(length=100)
    long getPercentFreqAt(int index);
    void setPercentFreqAt(int index, long percentFreq);
    long addPercentFreqAt(int index, long addition);
}

Supported methods

Simple get/set

[get]<FieldName>[At], [set]<FieldName>[At], is<FieldName>[At] - simple get/set. For boolean fields, isFoo() Java bean syntax variation is supported. Also, get- and set- prefixes could be omitted, e. g.

interface Point {
    double x();
    void x(double x);

    double y();
    void y(double y);
}

Volatile get/set

getVolatile<FieldName>[At], setVolatile<FieldName>[At]

"Ordered" set

setOrdered<FieldName>[At] - ordered write operation, the same as behind AtomicInteger.lazySet()

Simple add

type add<FieldName>[At]([int index, ]type addition) - equivalent of

    int foo = getFoo();
    foo += addition;
    setFoo(foo);
    return foo;

works only with numeric primitive field types: byte, char, short, int, long, double, float

Atomic add

type addAtomic<FieldName>[At]([int index, ]type addition) - same as add, operates via atomic operations, works only with numeric primitive field types.

Compare-and-swap

boolean compareAndSwap<FieldName>[At]([int index, ]type expectedValue, type newValue) - atomic field value exchange, returns true if successfully swapped the value. Works only with primitive, enum and Date field types.

getUsing

getUsing<FieldName>[At]([int index, ]Type using) - for String, CharSequence or another value interface field types. Reads the value into the given on-heap object. Primarily useful for retrieving data from flyweight implementations without creating garbage.

If the field type is String or CharSequence, using parameter type must be StringBuilder. Return type of the getUsing method in this case might be CharSequence, StringBuilder, String or void, if this char sequence field is marked as @NotNull. Semantically this method is equivalent to

CharSequence getUsingName(StringBuilder using) {
    using.setLength(0);
    CharSequence name = getName();
    if (name != null) {
       using.append(name);
       return using;
    } else {
       return null;
    }
}

Note that the StringBuilder is cleared via setLength(0) before reusing.

If the field type is another value interface field, using parameter type is the value interface, the return type of the method could be the interface or void. See getUsingCenter(Point using) in the example above.

Table of supported methods (type of field × type of method)

	Integer type: byte..long	float, double	boolean	Char sequence	Value interface	enum type	Date
get/set	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Volatile get/set, ordered set	✔	✔	✔			✔	✔
Compare-and-swap	✔	✔	✔			✔	✔
Simple add, atomic add	✔	✔
getUsing				✔	✔

Field configuration via annotations

Field ordering in flyweight layout

Field order is unspecified. To ensure some order, put @Group annotations on any of field's methods, for example:

interface Complex {
    @Group(1)
    double real();
    void real(double real);

    @Group(2)
    double image();
    void image(double image);
}

Groups are ordered in the ascending order of their argument numbers. In the above case, the generated flyweight implementation will place real field at 0-7 bytes and image field at 8-15 bytes from it's offset.

Field nullability

By default, enum and String/CharSequence fields are nullable. Annotate them with @net.openhft.chronicle.values.NotNull to forbid null values:

interface Instrument {
    CharSequence getSymbol();
    void setSymbol(@NotNull @MaxUtf8Length(5) CharSequence symbol);
}

Numeric field ranges

Annotate numeric fields with @Range(min=, max=) to save space in flyweight implementation, e. g.

interface Transaction {
    int getSecondFromDayStart();
    void setSecondFromDayStart(@Range(min = 0, max = 24 * 60 * 60) int secondFromDayStart);
}

The field SecondFromDayStart could take only 17 bits in bytes, instead of 32.

Field alignment

For flyweight implementation, you might need to align certain fields, to ensure some properties of reads and writes. For example, you might want to ensure, that a certain field doesn't cross cache line boundary:

interface Message {
    ...many fields

    @Align(dontCross=64)
    long getImportantField();
    void setImportantField(long importantValue);
}

See @Align and @Array annotations Javadocs for more information.

Use

// flyweight
Point offHeapPoint = Values.newDirectReference(Point.class);
((Byteable) offHeapPoint).bytesStore(bytesStore, offset, 16);
offHeapPoint.setX(0);
offHeapPoint.setY(0);

// on-heap
Point onHeapPoint = Values.newHeapInstance(Point.class);
onHeapPoint.setX(1)
onHeapPoint.setY(2);

The generated on-heap and flyweight classes do implement:

• Copyable<Point>, to allow easy data exchange: onHeapPoint.copyFrom(offHeapPoint)
• BytesMarshallable from Chronicle Bytes
• Proper equals(), hashCode() and toString()
• Byteable, but on-heap implementation is dummy, throws UnsupportedOperationException

For convenience, you could make the value interface to extend the above utility interfaces, to avoid casting:

interface Point extends Byteable, BytesMarshallable, Copyable { ... }

Point offHeapPoint = Values.newDirectReference(Point.class);
// no cast
offHeapPoint.bytesStore(bytesStore, offset, offHeapPoint.maxSize());

Javadocs