A Buffer is abstract class of java.nio, which contains fixed amount of data. It can store data and later retrieve those data. Buffer has key three properties:
- Capacity: A buffer’s capacity is the number of elements it contains. It is constant number that doesn’t change
- Limit: A buffer limits is the index of the first element that should not be read or written. It always less than buffer’s capacity.
- Position: A buffer position is the index of next element to be read from the buffer.
There is one subclass of this class for each non-boolean primitive type e.g. CharBuffer, IntBuffer etc. Buffer is abstract class that extended by non-Boolean primitive that provide common behavior across the various Buffers as shown below.
A buffer is a linear, finite sequence of elements of a specific primitive type wrapped inside an object. It constitutes date content and information about the data into single object. Data may transfer in to or out of the buffer by the I/O operations by a channel at the specified position. The I/O operation can read and write at the current position and then increment the position by the number of elements transferred. Buffer throws BufferUnderflowException and BufferOverflowException if position exceed while get operation or put operation respectively. The position field of Buffer specified the position to retrieve or insert the data element inside Buffer. Limit fields of Buffer indicates the end of the buffer which can be set using below operation
public final Buffer limit(int newLimit)
We can also drain the buffer by using flip method as below operation
public final Buffer flip()
Flip method set the limit to the current position and position to 0.The rewind () method is similar to flip () but does not affect the limit. It only sets the position back to 0. You can use rewind () to go back and reread the data in a buffer that has already been flipped.
Byte Buffers:
ByteBuffer is similar to OS ByteBuffer that could be mapped to OS’s ByteBuffer without any translation. ByteBuffer uses Byte core unit to read and write IO data, which is more significant, compare to other primitive data type buffers.
Byte buffers can be created either by allocation, which allocates space for the buffer’s content, or by wrapping an existing byte array into a buffer.
ByteBuffer are two type Direct Buffer and Indirect Buffer.
Direct & Indirect Buffers
ByteBuffer are two types Direct Buffer and Indirect Buffers. The key difference between direct buffer and indirect buffer is that direct buffer could directly access native IO calls whereas indirect buffers could not. Direct buffer access file data directly by using native I/O operation to fill or drain byte buffer. Direct buffer is memory consuming but other side it provided most efficient I/O mechanism. It doesn’t copy the buffer’s content to an intermediate buffer or vice versa.
Indirect buffer could also be used to pass the data but it could not directly uses native I/O operation upon it. Indirect buffer indirectly uses temporary direct buffer to access file IO data.
A direct buffer could be created by allocateDirect factory method, which is more expensive, and therefore it is advisable to use direct buffers only when they yield a measureable gain in program performance.
Whether a byte buffer is direct or non-direct may be determined by invoking its isDirect () method. This method is provided so that explicit buffer management can be done in performance-critical code
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