Getting started with a custom JXTA PeerGroup

Question

I have been working with JXTA 2.3 for the last year or so for a peer-to-peer computing platform I am developing. I am migrating to JXTA 2.5 and in the process I am trying to clean up a lot of my use of JXTA. For the most part, I approached JXTA with a just make it work attitude. I used it to jumpstart creating and managing my peer-to-peer overlay network and providing basic communication services. I would like to use it in a more JXTA way since I am making changes to move to 2.5 anyway.

My first step would be a basic creation of a custom PeerGroup. I see some new new mechanisms that are using the META-INF.services infrastructure of Java. Should I be listing a related PeerGroup implementing object here with a GUID in net.jxta.platform.Module? As I understand it, if I do this, when a group with a spec ID matching the GUID is encountered and joined or created it should automatically use the matching object. I should be able to just manually tie a PeerGroup object to the group but this new method using META-INF seems to be a lot easier to manage.

Does anyone have any pointers or examples of using this infrastructure for PeerGroup implementation? Also, some general information on the META-INF.services mechanism in Java would be helpful.

Answer 1

The META-INF.services stuff is known by its class name in the API: ServiceLoader. A Google search for ServiceLoader yields some information.

I am not really familiar with it, but sometimes it's all about knowing the right search keywords.