How to configure AdvancedExternalizers with RemoteCaches?

[jameslivingston]

I'm connecting to a remote Infinispan server, and want to use some AdvancedExternalizers to control how the data is serialized. How do you configure that?

All the examples in the documentation add then to the GlobalConfigurationBuilder, but GlobalMarshaller appears to be designed for embedded usage not remote usage. GenericJBossMarshaller/JBossMarshaller would seem to be the right ones, but AbstractJBossMarshaller.baseCfg is protected with no way to add externalizers.

The only way I've been able to find of configuring them is to copy the AbstractJBossMarshaller class to my own code, and have a subclass which accepts externalizers (or write my own Marshaller). Is there a better way?

[gustavonalle]

For remote caches you can use Externalizers, as described in Infinispan 9.1 User Guide

[jameslivingston]

That means I need to use annotations on the classes I want to externalise, correct? Unfortunately I can't annotate those classes, hence wanting to use an AdvancedExternalizer. If I can't do that, I might have to turn then into byte arrays in the code storing them in the cache.

[rvansa]

That's not the only option; you could implement org.jboss.marshaller.ClassExternalizerFactory, inherit from AbstractJBossMarshaller/GenericJBossMarshaller and register it using baseCfg.setClassExternalizerFactory(...) in marshaller constructor. Then you override the marshaller in Hot Rod client configuration. See also Marshalling non serializeable objects to a RemoteCache

[jameslivingston]

Thanks, that seems to work well. I'd seen that before, but for some reason thought I couldn't access the configuration in a subclass.