Netty to parse file stream?

Question

I have a requirement that two specific processes on the same host communicate through an append-only file. One process produces, the other consumes. The object-stream must hit the disk before going to the second process (at least the OS cache of the disk).

I would like to use Netty to parse the object-stream in the file. Is there a way to attach Netty to the file?

For latency sake, I would rather that it didn't involve a timer. Blocking is okay.

(I'm using JDK-7 if that makes any difference)

Answer 1

There are some new features in Java 7 that you may find useful:

• By passing APPEND as parameter to the Files.newOutputStream(...) you can write to an existing file.
• Another addition is the WatchService which can be used to listen for event changes in a library as described in Oracle's Java Tutorial .

Answer 2

Netty is for socket. I guess Apache Camel is more suitable if you need to use file:

• http://camel.apache.org/
• http://camel.apache.org/file2.html
• http://camel.apache.org/stream.html