Stream Helper Methods in Java Compat
The stream classes provide all of the low-level methods necessary for encoding and decoding Ice types. However, it would be tedious and error-prone to manually encode complex Ice types such as classes, structs, and dictionaries using these low-level functions. For this reason, the Slice compiler generates helper methods for streaming complex Ice types.
We will use the following Slice definitions to demonstrate the language mapping:
Slice
module M { sequence<...> Seq; dictionary<...> Dict; struct S { ... } enum E { ... } class C { ... } interface I { ... } }
The Slice compiler generates the corresponding helper classes and methods shown below:
Java Compat
package M; public class SeqHelper { public static T[] read(Ice.InputStream in); public static void write(Ice.OutputStream out, T[] v); ... } public class DictHelper { public static java.util.Map<..., ...> read(Ice.InputStream in); public static void write(Ice.OutputStream out, java.util.Map<..., ...> v); ... } public class S ... { public static S ice_read(Ice.InputStream in); public static void ice_write(Ice.OutputStream out, S v); // Instance methods public void ice_readMembers(Ice.InputStream in); public void ice_writeMembers(Ice.OutputStream out); ... } public enum E ... { public static E ice_read(Ice.InputStream in); public static void ice_write(Ice.OutputStream out, E v); // Instance method public void ice_write(Ice.OutputStream out); ... } public class CHolder implements Ice.ReadValueCallback ... { public CHolder(); public CHolder(C v); public C value; ... } public class IPrxHelper ... { public static IPrx read(Ice.InputStream in); public static void write(Ice.OutputStream out, IPrx v); ... }