Netty Encoder

See: java - Netty Encoder Not Being Called - Stack Overflow

Using Netty 4.0.27 & Java 1.8.0_20

So I am attempting to learn how Netty works by building a simple chat server (the typical networking tutorial program, I guess?). Designing my own simple protocol, called ARC (Andrew's Relay Chat)... so that's why you see ARC in the code a lot. K, so here's the issue.

So here I start the server and register the various handlers...

Java Code:

public void start()
{
        System.out.println("Registering handlers...");
        ArcServerInboundHandler inboundHandler = new ArcServerInboundHandler(this);

        EventLoopGroup bossGroup = new NioEventLoopGroup();
        EventLoopGroup workerGroup = new NioEventLoopGroup();
        try
        {
                ServerBootstrap bootstrap = new ServerBootstrap();
                bootstrap.group(bossGroup, workerGroup).channel(NioServerSocketChannel.class).childHandler(new ChannelInitializer<SocketChannel>()
                {
                        @Override
                        public void initChannel(SocketChannel ch) throws Exception
                        {
                                ch.pipeline().addLast(new ArcDecoder(), inboundHandler);
                                ch.pipeline().addLast(new ArcEncoder());
                        }
                }).option(ChannelOption.SO_BACKLOG, 128).childOption(ChannelOption.SO_KEEPALIVE, true);

                try
                {
                        System.out.println("Starting Arc Server on port " + port);
                        ChannelFuture f = bootstrap.bind(port).sync();
                        f.channel().closeFuture().sync();
                }
                catch(InterruptedException e)
                {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                }
        }
        finally
        {
                workerGroup.shutdownGracefully();
                bossGroup.shutdownGracefully();
        }
}

My "inboundHandler" does get called when the user connects.

Java Code:

@Override
public void channelActive(ChannelHandlerContext ctx) throws Exception
{
    System.out.println("CLIENT CONNECTED"); // THIS PRINTS, REACHES THIS POINT
    ArcPacket packet = new ArcPacket();
    packet.setArc("PUBLIC_KEY");
    packet.setField("KEY", Crypto.bytesToHex(server.getRsaKeys().getPublic().getEncoded()));
    ctx.writeAndFlush(packet);
}

This is my encoder, which does not seem to get called at all...

Java Code:

public class ArcEncoder extends MessageToByteEncoder<ArcPacket>
{
    @Override
    protected void encode(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, ArcPacket msg, ByteBuf out) throws Exception
    {
        System.out.println("ENCODE"); // NEVER GETS HERE
        String message = ArcPacketFactory.encode(msg);
        byte[] data = message.getBytes("UTF-8");
        out.writeBytes(data);
        System.out.println("WROTE");
    }

    @Override
    public boolean acceptOutboundMessage(Object msg) throws Exception
    {
        System.out.println("ACCEPT OUTBOUND MESSAGE"); // NEVER GETS HERE
        return msg instanceof ArcPacket;
    }
}

So,

The code that calls ctx.writeAndFlush(packet); is run, but it doesn't seem to invoke the encoder at any point. Am I missing something obvious? Perhaps I'm adding the encoder incorrectly? Though it looks right when I compare it to other examples I've seen.

Thanks for any help.