Concrete document types

In document processing, setFieldValue() and getFieldValue() is used to access fields in a Document. The data for each of the fields in the document instance is wrapped in field values. If the documents use structs, they are handled the same way. Example:

book.setFieldValue("title", new StringFieldValue("Moby Dick"));

Alternatively, use code generation to get a concrete document type, a Document subclass that represents the exact document type (defined for example in the file book.sd). To generate, include it in the build, plugins section in pom.xml:

<plugin>
    <groupId>com.yahoo.vespa</groupId>
    <artifactId>vespa-documentgen-plugin</artifactId>
    <!-- Find latest version at search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.yahoo.vespa%20a:vespa-documentgen-plugin -->
    <version>8.458.13</version>
    <configuration>
        <schemasDirectory>etc/schemas</schemasDirectory>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>document-gen</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>document-gen</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

schemasDirectory contains the schemas. Generated classes will be in target/generated-sources. The document type book will be represented as the Java class Book, and it will have native methods for data access, so the code example above becomes:

book.setTitle("Moby Dick");
Configuration Description
Java package

Specify the Java package of the generated types by using the following configuration:

<configuration>
    <packageName>com.yahoo.mypackage</packageName>
User provided annotation types

To provide the Java implementation of a given annotation type, yielding behaviour of annotations (implementing additional interfaces may be one scenario):

<configuration>
    <schemasDirectory>etc/schemas</schemasDirectory>
    <provided>
        <annotation>
            <type>NodeImpl</type>
            <clazz>com.yahoo.vespa.document.NodeImpl</clazz>
        </annotation>
        <annotation>
            <type>DocumentImpl</type>
            <clazz>com.yahoo.vespa.document.DocumentImpl</clazz>
        </annotation>
    </provided>
Here, the plugin will not generate a type for NodeImpl and DocumentImpl, but the ConcreteDocumentFactory will support them, so that code depending on this will work.
Abstract annotation types

Make a generated annotation type abstract:

<configuration>
    <abztract>
      <annotation>
        <type>myabstractannotationtype</type>
      </annotation>
    </abztract>

Inheritance

If input document types use single inheritance, the generated Java types will inherit accordingly. However, if a document type inherits from more than one type (example: document myDoc inherits base1, base2), the Java type for myDoc will just inherit from Document, since Java has single inheritance. Refer to schema inheritance for examples.

Feeding

Concrete types are often used in a docproc, used for feeding data into stateful clusters. To make Vespa use the correct type during feeding and serialization, include in <container> in services.xml:

<container id="default" version="1.0">
    <document type="book"
              bundle="the name in <artifactId> in your pom.xml"
              class="com.yahoo.mypackage.Book" />

Vespa will make the type Book and all other concrete document, annotation and struct types from the bundle available to the docproc(s) in the container. The specified bundle must be the Bundle-SymbolicName. It will also use the given Java type when feeding through a docproc chain. If the class is not in the specified bundle, the container will emit an error message about not being able to load ConcreteDocumentFactory as a component, and not start. There is no need to Export-Package the concrete document types from the bundle, a package-info.java is generated that does that.

Factory and copy constructor

Along with the actual types, the Maven plugin will also generate a class ConcreteDocumentFactory, which holds information about the actual concrete types present. It can be used to initialize an object given the document type:

Book b = (Book) ConcreteDocumentFactory.getDocument("book", new DocumentId("id:book:book::0"));

This can be done for example during deserialization, when a document is created. The concrete types also have copy constructors that can take a generic Document object of the same type. The contents will be deep-copied:

Document bookGeneric;
// …
Book book = new Book(bookGeneric, bookGeneric.getId());

All the accessor and mutator methods on Document will work as expected on concrete types. Note that getFieldValue() will generate an ad-hoc FieldValue every time, since concrete types don't use them to store data. setFieldValue() will pack the data into the native Java field of the type.

Document processing

In a document processor, cast the incoming document base into the concrete document type before accessing it. Example:

public class ConcreteDocDocProc extends DocumentProcessor {
    public Progress process(Processing processing) {
        DocumentPut put = (DocumentPut) processing.getDocumentOperations().get(0);
        Book b = (Book) (put.getDocument());
        b.setTitle("The Title");
        return Progress.DONE;
    }
}

Concrete document types are not supported for document updates or removes.