tallpsmith/hbase-utils

Utility library for working with HBase, includes common patterns to improve code readability

Introduction
============

When I was started investigating HBase, I was initially thrown by the heavy use of byte[]'s.
There is a clear necessity within HBase to deal with these at the lowest level to support flexible storage options, but
there are many common cases where the developer may wish for a more expressive API that leaves there code clean and readable.

My goal here was to leverage a common set of patterns for readability and flexibility.  Initially the bulk of
the utility classes revolve around the use of the Builder pattern.

First expressed in HBASE-2051, this package has been created to assist the HBase client developer.

Examples:

HTable hTable = ....

PutBuilder builder = new PutBuilder(hTable);
// first Row
builder.withRowKey(1stRowKey).withColumnFamily("foo")
    .put("columnA", valueA)
    .put("columnB",valueB);
// secondRow
builder.withRowKey(2ndRowKey).withColumnFamily("eek")
    .put("columnC", valueC)
    .put("columnD",valueD);
..
builder.putAll();