Spring MVC without HTTP requests

Question

I need to create a system oriented around Methods where providers can register for the Methods they handle and consumers can do two things (for now) - either get Metadata for a method or execute it. I'm considering creating a REST style architecture where methods are resources with unique URIs and an interface consisting of two methods - getMetadata and Execute.

I'll need to have an equivalent of @RequestMapping so that the provider that handles specific methods can be located by the central dispatcher. As a result the provider will return either Model or Metadata object.

This looks pretty similar to Spring MVC but I don't want to expose and consume my resources(methods) over the web and use http as this will incur unnecessary overhead. Instead I want to use it like a standard java API where java methods are called and java objects are transferred. I can do that by writing my own equivalent of @RequestMapping and Dispatcher logic but I was wondering if there's a better way to do this with Spring. Any suggestions?

Thanks! Kostadin

Answer 1

You are saying you want to do using REST and everything will have a unique URI but not over HTTP ?? Sounds like you are looking for RMI or something similar... Chech Burlap or Hessian both of them has excellent support from spring.

Answer 2

There's software out there called NetKernel that might interest you. Its literature says that it is an implementation of Resource-Oriented Computing. It looks like it rigorously separates its logical computing model from the physical details. It's RESTful, defining a resource model, a limited set of verbs, and a naming scheme. Implemented in Java. Comes with HTTP and other transports built in.

It doesn't have a Java in-process transport, but you could probably write one for it pretty easily.

Hmm...if you never need to process requests from out-of-process sources, it's probably overkill for you, but maybe it will show you some useful patterns.