Method and system for dynamic proxy classes

• US 6,877,163 B1
• Filed: 06/14/1999
• Issued: 04/05/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/1999
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Jones, Peter C., Scheifler, Robert W., Wollrath, Ann M.
• Primary Examiner(s): An, Meng-Al T.
• Assistant Examiner(s): HO, ANDY
• Application Number:
  US09/332,029
• Time in Patent Office: 2,122 Days
• Field of Search: 719/331, 719/332, 719/315, 719/316, 709/315, 709/316, 707/103, 707/104
• US Class Current: 719/332
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/548 Object oriented; Remote method invocation [RMI] non-remote method invocation G06F9/449

Abstract

In an object-oriented data processing system, methods and systems in accordance with the present invention provide a proxy class dynamically generated at runtime that implements a list of interfaces specified at runtime such that a method invocation through an interface on an instance of the class is encoded and dispatched uniformly to an object that performs the invocation of the requested method. The generation of the proxy class at runtime and the specification at runtime of the list of interfaces implemented by the proxy class allow the interfaces to be used to be chosen at runtime before generation of the proxy class. Since the proxy class does not need to be created before compile time, the interface list implemented by the proxy class does not need to be known at the time the source code is written.

Claims

1. A method in a data processing system comprising the steps of:

specifying, by a first processing entity at runtime, an interface that is not referenced by the first processing entity, the interface having a method;

generating, at runtime, a class that implements the interface;

creating, by the first processing entity, an instance of the class;

receiving by the class instance a request from a second processing entity to process the method of the interface, wherein the second processing entity has a reference to the interface;

dispatching the request to an object to facilitate processing of the method of the interface; and

returning a result of the processed method by the object to the second processing entity.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of generating a class further includes the step of:

generating at runtime a class that implements a set of interfaces specified at runtime, each interface having one or more methods, wherein at least one of the interfaces in the set of interfaces is not referenced by the first processing entity and is referenced by the second processing entity.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating an instance further includes the step of:

specifying an object to process method invocations on the instance.

4. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a data processing system to perform a method comprising the steps of:

specifying, by a first processing entity at runtime, an interface that is not referenced by the first processing entity, the interface having a method;

generating, at runtime, a class that implements the interface;

creating, by the first processing entity, an instance of the class;

receiving by the class instance a request from a second processing entity to process the method of the interface, wherein the second processing entity has a reference to the interface;

dispatching the request to an object to facilitate processing of the method of the interface; and

returning a result of the processed method by the object to the second processing entity.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 4, wherein the step of generating a class further includes the step of:

generating at runtime a class that implements a set of interfaces specified at runtime, each interface having one or more methods, wherein at least one of the interfaces in the set of interfaces is not referenced by the first processing entity and is referenced by the second processing entity.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 4, wherein the step of creating an instance further includes the step of:

specifying an object to process method invocations on the instance.

7. A method in a data-processing system having a proxy class implementing interfaces specified at runtime, the interfaces containing methods, the system further having an instance of the proxy class and an invocation handler object for executing the methods contained by the interfaces, the method comprising the steps of:

determining, by a processing entity, a first set of interfaces to be implemented by the proxy class, wherein the first set of interfaces are not referenced by the processing entity;

generating at runtime the proxy class implementing the first set of interfaces;

receiving a request by an instance of the proxy class to invoke a method of an interface included in the first set of interfaces implemented by the proxy class;

dispatching the request to the invocation handler object;

returning a value from the invocation handler object to the proxy class instance; and

returning the value from the proxy class instance to the processing entity.

8. A data-processing system comprising:

means for specifying, by a first processing entity at runtime, an interface that is not referenced by the first processing entity, the interface having a method;

means for generating, at runtime, a class that implements the interface;

means for creating, by the first processing entity, an instance of the class;

means for receiving by the class instance a request from a second processing entity to process the method of the interface, wherein the second processing entity has a reference to the interface;

means for dispatching the request to an object to facilitate processing of the method of the interface; and

means for returning a result of the processed method by the object to the second processing entity.