See this page for more details about Pail:
http://deals.manningpublications.com/pail.pdf

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>mtitek.pail.string.samples</groupId>
    <artifactId>mtitek-pail-string-samples</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.hadoop</groupId>
            <artifactId>hadoop-common</artifactId>
            <version>2.7.3</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.backtype</groupId>
            <artifactId>dfs-datastores</artifactId>
            <version>1.3.6</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

This java class shows how to use the Pail API to write/read String data types values to/from pail.

▸ src/main/java/mtitek/pail/string/samples/PailString.java

package mtitek.pail.string.samples;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.UUID;

import org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path;

import com.backtype.hadoop.pail.Pail;

public class PailString {
    private static final String PAIL_PATH = "/tmp/pail-test/pail-string";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        writeString();

        readString();
    }

    private static void writeString() throws IOException {
        @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
        final Pail<String> pail = Pail.create(PailString.PAIL_PATH, false);

        final Pail<String>.TypedRecordOutputStream typedRecordOutputStream = pail.openWrite();

        final String uuid = UUID.randomUUID().toString();

        typedRecordOutputStream.writeObject("UUID".getBytes());
        typedRecordOutputStream.writeObject(uuid.getBytes());

        typedRecordOutputStream.close();
    }

    private static void readString() throws IOException {
        final Pail<byte[]> bytesPail = new Pail<>(PailString.PAIL_PATH);

        final Pail<byte[]>.PailIterator localPailIterator = bytesPail.iterator();

        while (localPailIterator.hasNext()) {
            final byte[] bytes = (byte[]) localPailIterator.next();

            System.out.println(new String(bytes));
        }
    }
}