Making Java objects queryable by Infinispan remote clients

The following is a common question amongst Infinispan community users:

How do I make my Java objects queryable by remote clients? 

Annotation Method

The simplest way is to take advantage Infinispan Protostream annotations to mark your objects queryable and decide how each object field should be indexed. Example:

Then, the ProtoSchemaBuilder can inspect the annotated class and derive a Google Protocol Buffers schema file from it. Example:

Finally, the schema file needs to be registered in the “___protobuf_metadata” cache:

Although this is by far the easiest way to make your Java objects queryable, this method might not always be viable. For example, you might not be able to modify the Java object classes to add the annotations. For such use cases, a more verbose method is available that does not require modifying the source code of the Java object.

Plain Object Method

For example, given this Java object:

A Protocol Buffers schema must be defined where comments are used to define the object as queryable and decide how each field is indexed:

This method also requires a Protostream message marshaller to be defined which specifies how each field is serialized/deserialized:

This method still requires the Protocol Buffers schema to be registered remotely, but on top of that, the schema and marshaller need to be registered in the client:

Clearly, this second method is a lot more verbose and more laborious when refactoring. If any changes are made to the Java object, the marshaller and Protocol Buffer schema need to also be changed accordingly. This is done automatically in the first method.

Both methods are demonstrated in full in the queryable-pojos demo.

Cheers
Galder