JXTA in a Nutshell

Pipes

One of the most powerful of JXTA’s services is the pipe service. The idea of a pipe is familiar to users of Unix systems: a pipe is used to connect the output from one command to the input of another command. On a Unix system, if you want to count the number of unique exceptions that occur in a log file, you might use this command:

piccolo% cat log | grep "Exception" | sort | uniq | wc -l

The cat command prints the log file to its standard output. The grep command reads this file from its standard input and searches for lines containing the string “Exception”; it prints matching lines to its standard output. The sort command reads these lines from its standard input and sends the sorted list to its standard output, where it is read by the uniq command, which removes duplicate lines. The unduplicated lines are sent to its standard output, where they are read by the wc command, which counts the number of lines and finally prints that number.

Pipes are quite useful in that they allow you to build complex functionality from a number of simple building blocks. JXTA takes the familiar idea of pipes and extends their functionality to the network.

Peer Endpoints

JXTA pipes are defined in terms of the endpoints available to a peer. A peer endpoint is a logical abstraction of an address on a network transport that is capable of sending and receiving network messages. In the examples we’ve seen so far, the network transport has always been IP-based: the shell peer we’ve looked ...