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  1. .asf.yaml
  2. CONTRIBUTING.md
  3. LICENSE
  4. NOTICE
  5. README.md
README.md

Apache Fluo Bytes

Build Status Apache License Maven Central Javadoc

Apache Fluo Bytes is a simple library with the goal of providing an extremely stable API for handling bytes, suitable for use in Apache Fluo and other projects' APIs.

Features and Goals

This project aims to fill a void in Java, by providing convenient objects to represent a sequence of bytes and associated utility classes for situations when a raw byte array is not appropriate.

Specifically, it provides a ByteSequence interface, analogous to Java‘s CharSequence, an immutable Bytes implementation analogous to Java’s String, and a corresponding BytesBuilder analogous to Java's StringBuilder.

The provided classes have appropriate methods for serialization, and proper equals and hashCode implementations, as well as a comparator for ByteSequence, so they will be suitable for use in Sets and as keys in Maps.

An immutable bytes implementation makes it possible to pass data between APIs without the need for performance-killing protective copies. This benefit is compounded if this library is used by multiple projects, as the need to make protective copies while passing data between a project and its dependency's API is eliminated.

This project aims to provide a fluent and intuitive API, with support for conversions to/from other common types, such as ByteBuffer, byte[], and CharSequence/String.

This project requires at least Java 8, and supports Stream and functional APIs where appropriate.

See this blog post for some additional background.

Safe for APIs

Using an external library in a project's API poses some risks to that project, especially if it and its dependencies depend on different versions of that library. This project attempts to mitigate those risks, so that it can be used safely by other projects.

This project is made safe for reuse in other projects' APIs by adopting the following principles:

  • Using Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 to make strong declarations about backwards-compatibility
  • Strongly avoid breaking changes (avoid major version bumps), so that projects can converge on the latest version of this library required by their code and that of their dependencies, without risk of incompatibility
  • No runtime dependencies itself, to eliminate any potential conflicts from transitive dependencies if this library is used
  • Use generic package naming scheme not tied to the Maven coordinates, in case the project relocates or becomes independent of Fluo in the future
  • Practice review-then-commit during development to protect against poor initial design which is stuck with the project for the long-term
  • Provide @since tags in Javadocs to communicate minimum required versions for particular features

Public API declaration for Semantic Versioning

This project‘s public API are all the publicly visible classes, methods, and fields accessible outside the project’s packages.


Apache Fluo Bytes is an Apache Fluo project.