Question

With Netty’s new 4.x API, there have been some changes (some big some small). I have migrated an old server core of mine to work with the new API, but I cannot figure out a way to solve this problem. In 3.x, I could use

     MessageEvent e

This allowed me to cast e to the type I needed (in this case, ServerMessage and String, as those were the two types used for server->client messages).

When using 3.x, I could do:

  public void writeRequested(ChannelHandlerContext chctx, MessageEvent e)
    {
        if(e.getMessage() instanceof ServerMessage) //change 
        {
         ServerMessage message = (ServerMessage) e.getMessage();
        Channels.write(chctx,e.getFuture(),message.getData());
        logger.debug("Message sent (id: "+message.getMessageID()+ " data: "+message.getMessageBody()+")");


    }

        else if(e.getMessage() instanceof String)
        {
            String data =(String)e.getMessage();
            ChannelBuffer buffer = ChannelBuffers.buffer(data.length());
            buffer.writeBytes(data.getBytes());

            Channels.write(chctx,e.getFuture(),buffer);

            logger.debug("Written string (possible <policy-file-request />) to client #id ->" +
                    +Environment.getGameInstance().getManager().getSession(chctx.getChannel());
        }
    }

However, with 4.x, I am a bit confused to what I can use. I have partially implemented simple sending like so;

public void encode(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, ServerMessage msg, ByteBuf buffer) {

   if(msg instanceof ServerMessage) {

        ServerMessage message = (ServerMessage)msg;
        ctx.channel().write(message.getData());
        logger.debug("Message sent (id: "+message.getMessageID()+ " data: "+message.getMessageBody()+")");

   }
    else {
                 // string stuff here
            }
   }

My basic problem is that how would I go about writing a String as well as a ServerMesssage to the client?
(My String is a simple )

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Just use the common super-class of the two messages and then cast as you did in 3.x if you really want to use the same ChannelHandler for both Objects. Anyway I think it would be much more clean if you just use two different ChannelHandler.