Explicity mapping between ActionScript and Java objects for the BlazeDS Messaging Service

Question

The BlazeDS documentation shows how to explicitly map between ActionScript and Java objects. For example, this works fine for RPC services, e.g.
import flash.utils.IExternalizable;
import flash.utils.IDataInput;
import flash.utils.IDataOutput;
[Bindable]
[RemoteClass(alias="javaclass.User")]
public class User implements IExternalizable {
        public var id : String;
        public var secret : String;
        public function User() {
        public function readExternal(input : IDataInput) : void {
                id = input.readObject() as String;
        public function writeExternal(output : IDataOutput) : void {
                output.writeObject(id);
and
import java.io.Externalizable;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ObjectInput;
import java.io.ObjectOutput;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Set;
public class User implements Externalizable {
    protected String id;
    protected String secret;
    public String getId() {
        return id;
    public void setId(String id) {
        this.id = id;
    public String getSecret() {
        return secret;
    public void setSecret(String secret) {
        this.secret = secret;
    public void readExternal(ObjectInput in) throws IOException,
                ClassNotFoundException {
        id = (String) in.readObject();
    public void writeExternal(ObjectOutput out) throws IOException {
        out.writeObject(id);
If I called an RPC service that returns a User, the secret is not sent over the wire.  Is it also possible to do this for the messaging service? That is, if I create a custom messaging adapter and use the function below, can I also prevent secret from being sent?
MessageBroker messageBroker = MessageBroker.getMessageBroker(null);
AsyncMessage message = new AsyncMessage();
message.setDestination("MyMessagingService");
message.setClientId(UUIDUtils.createUUID());
message.setMessageId(UUIDUtils.createUUID());
User user = new User();
user.setId("id");
user.setSecret("secret");
message.setBody(user);
messageBroker.routeMessageToService(message, null);

Answer 1

Hi Martin. The way that AMF serialization/deserialization works for BlazeDS is the same regardless of which service is being used, so yes that code will work for messaging as well. On the server, the serialization/deserialization of messages happens at the endpoint. For an incoming message for example, the endpoint deserializes the message and then hands it off to the MessageBroker which decides which service/destination to deliver the message to.
That was a good question. Thanks for asking it. Lots of people are used to doing custom serialization/deserialization with the RPC services (RemoteObject/RemotingService) but I'm not sure everyone realizes they can do this for messaging as well.
-Alex