String Interning - What ,Why and When ?

What is String Interning 

String Interning is a method of storing only one copy of each distinct String Value, which must be immutable.

In Java String class has a public method intern() that returns a canonical representation for the string object. Java's String class privately maintains a pool of strings, where String literals are automatically interned.

When the intern() method is invoked on a String object it looks the string contained by this String object in the pool, if the string is found there then the string from the pool is returned. Otherwise, this String object is added to the pool and a reference to this String object is returned.

The intern() method helps in comparing two String objects with == operator by looking into the pre-existing pool of string literals, no doubt it is faster than equals() method. The pool of strings in Java is maintained for saving space and for faster comparisons. Normally Java programmers are advised to use equals(), not ==, to compare two strings. This is because == operator compares memory locations, while equals() method compares the content stored in two objects.

Why and When to Intern ?

Thought Java automatically interns all Remember that we only need to intern strings when they are not constants, and we want to be able to quickly compare them to other interned strings. The intern() method should be used on strings constructed with new String() in order to compare them by == operator.

Let's take a look at the following Java program to understand the intern() behavior.

[code language="java"]
public class TestString {

public static void main(String[] args) {
String s1 = "Test";
String s2 = "Test";
String s3 = new String("Test");
final String s4 = s3.intern();
System.out.println(s1 == s2);
System.out.println(s2 == s3);
System.out.println(s3 == s4);
System.out.println(s1 == s3);
System.out.println(s1 == s4);
System.out.println(s1.equals(s2));
System.out.println(s2.equals(s3));
System.out.println(s3.equals(s4));
System.out.println(s1.equals(s4));
System.out.println(s1.equals(s3));
}

}


//Output
true
false
false
false
true
true
true
true
true
true


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SOAP Webservices Using Apache CXF : Adding Custom Object as Header in Outgoing Requests

What is CXF?

Apache CXF is an open source services framework. CXF helps you build and develop services using frontend programming APIs, like JAX-WS and JAX-RS. These services can speak a variety of protocols such as SOAP, XML/HTTP, RESTful HTTP, or CORBA and work over a variety of transports such as HTTP, JMS etc.

How CXF Works?

As you can see here and here, how CXF service calls are processed,most of the functionality in the Apache CXF runtime is implemented by interceptors. Every endpoint created by the Apache CXF runtime has potential interceptor chains for processing messages. The interceptors in the these chains are responsible for transforming messages between the raw data transported across the wire and the Java objects handled by the endpoint’s implementation code.

Interceptors in CXF

When a CXF client invokes a CXF server, there is an outgoing interceptor chain for the client and an incoming chain for the server. When the server sends the response back to the client, there is an outgoing chain for the server and an incoming one for the client. Additionally, in the case of SOAPFaults, a CXF web service will create a separate outbound error handling chain and the client will create an inbound error handling chain.

The interceptors are organized into phases to ensure that processing happens on the proper order.Various phases involved during the Interceptor chains are listed in CXF documentation here.

Adding your custom Interceptor involves extending one of the Abstract Intereceptor classes that CXF provides, and providing a phase when that interceptor should be invoked.

AbstractPhaseInterceptor class - This abstract class provides implementations for the phase management methods of the PhaseInterceptor interface. The AbstractPhaseInterceptor class also provides a default implementation of the handleFault() method.

Developers need to provide an implementation of the handleMessage() method. They can also provide a different implementation for the handleFault() method. The developer-provided implementations can manipulate the message data using the methods provided by the generic org.apache.cxf.message.Message interface.

For applications that work with SOAP messages, Apache CXF provides an AbstractSoapInterceptor class. Extending this class provides the handleMessage() method and the handleFault() method with access to the message data as an org.apache.cxf.binding.soap.SoapMessage object. SoapMessage objects have methods for retrieving the SOAP headers, the SOAP envelope, and other SOAP metadata from the message.

Below piece of code will show, how we can add a Custom Object as Header to an outgoing request –

Spring Configuration

[code language="xml"]
<jaxws:client id="mywebServiceClient"
serviceClass="com.saurzcode.TestService"
address="http://saurzcode.com:8088/mockTestService">

<jaxws:binding>
<soap:soapBinding version="1.2" mtomEnabled="true" />
</jaxws:binding>
</jaxws:client>
<cxf:bus>
<cxf:outInterceptors>
<bean class="com.saurzcode.ws.caller.SoapHeaderInterceptor" />
</cxf:outInterceptors>
</cxf:bus>
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Interceptor :-

[code language="java"]
public class SoapHeaderInterceptor extends AbstractSoapInterceptor {

public SoapHeaderInterceptor() {

super(Phase.POST_LOGICAL);

}

@Override
public void handleMessage(SoapMessage message) throws Fault {

List<Header> headers = message.getHeaders();

TestHeader testHeader = new TestHeader();

JAXBElement<TestHeader> testHeaders = new ObjectFactory()

.createTestHeader(testHeader);

try {

Header header = new Header(testHeaders.getName(), testHeader,

new JAXBDataBinding(TestHeader.class));

headers.add(header);

message.put(Header.HEADER_LIST, headers);

} catch (JAXBException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

}


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