How can a get() return the POF bytes without deserializing?

Question

Is it possible to perform a get() from the cache without deserializing an object, anmd instead request the POF bytes directly?
The use case is a middle tier server that is an extend client. It supports legacy downstream clients that should receive part or all of the byte[] directly.
The objective is to be able to transfer data and avoid a deserialization step:
  cache ---(POF)---> mid tier extend client ---(POF)---> downstream client This would need to work from a .NET or C++ extend client.
Thanks,
phil

Answer 1

Hi Phil,
This can be easily achieved using an entry processor, as long as you want to return the whole value. Something along the lines of the following should do the trick:
public Object process(InvocableMap.Entry entry) {
    return ((BinaryEntry) entry).getBinaryValue().toByteArray();
}The things are a bit trickier if you want to extract a single property only from the value but it is doable:
public Object process(InvocableMap.Entry entry) {
    BinaryEntry binEntry = (BinaryEntry) entry;
    PofValue value = PofValueParser.parse(binEntry.getBinaryValue(), (PofContext) binEntry.getSerializer());
    AbstractPofValue property = (AbstractPofValue) value.getChild(index);
    return property.getSerializedValue().toByteArray();
}Sorry I don't have time to test the code above, but off the top of my head I don't see a reason it shouldn't work.
Regards,
Aleks