Apache Wink Representations

In addition to the JAX-RS standard representations Apache Wink provides an expanded set of representations that can be used by an application to expose resources in a rich set of representations. The following section provides information about the representations that are supported by Apache Wink.

Apache Wink Representations Request Flow

The following diagram illustrates the client request flow for a resource.

Image Added

A resource is an abstract entity and as such can not be transmitted between peers. When a client is required to send or receive a resource it must use a representation of that resource. The resource representation is a specific formatting of the resource data. The diagram illustrates that a request for a resource is in fact a request for a specific representation of that resource.

Apache Wink implements resource representations through the use of providers for java objects as defined by the JAX-RS specification.

Apache Wink Providers

In addition to JAX-RS standard providers (refer to section 4.2 of the JAX-RS specification), Apache Wink provides a set of complementary providers. The purpose of these providers is to provide mapping services between various representations for example Atom, APP, RSS, OpenSearch, CSV, JSON and HTML, and their associated Java data models.

...

@Scope(ScopeType.SINGELTONSINGLETON)
@Provider
public class MyProvider implements MessageBodyReader<String>{
    ...
}

...