Object Serialization/De-serialization

Object Serialization/De-serialization

Java provides the ability to save objects in a byte-stream that can be later used to transfer objects across the networks, or can be saved to disk in the file, or can be stored in the database and later can be reconstituted to reclaim the objects. Object serialization is useful in several real-world applications and especially in the remote method invocation and distributed computing applications.Java beans and EJBs also use this aspect of java. This feature of java is known as serialization and reconstruction of the serialized object is known as de-serialization. 

The objects of any class which implements the Serializable interface can be serialized only. ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream allows serialization and de-serialization. There are various other classes and interfaces provide specific support for the serialization process. The keyword transient provides a language level means of making data that should not be de-serialized.

Serializtion/De-serialization

Example

Serialization

//Serialization
import java.io.FileOutputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;

import java.io.Serializable;

class Box implements Serializable{

      int h,w,l;

      public Box(int h, int w, int l) {

            super();

            this.h = h;

            this.w = w;

            this.l = l;

      }

       public void displayVolume()

       {

             System.out.println("Box Volume: "+h*w*l);

       }

}

public class TestSerialization {

      public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException{

            //serializing

      FileOutputStream fos=new FileOutputStream("store.txt");

      ObjectOutputStream oos=new ObjectOutputStream(fos);

      Box b=new Box(23,12,10);

      oos.writeObject(b);

      oos.flush();

      oos.close();

      System.out.println("object serialized");

                  }

}

Output:

object serialized

Deserialization

//Deserialization

import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.io.ObjectInputStream;

import java.io.Serializable;

class Box implements Serializable{

      int h,w,l;

      public Box(int h, int w, int l) {

            super();

            this.h = h;

            this.w = w;

            this.l = l;

      }

       public void displayVolume()

       {

             System.out.println("Box Volume: "+h*w*l);

       }

}

public class TestSerialization {

      public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException{

            //deserialization

      FileInputStream fis=new FileInputStream("store.txt");

      ObjectInputStream ois=new ObjectInputStream(fis);

      Box b=(Box)ois.readObject();

      System.out.println("Object retrieved");

      b.displayVolume();

           

                  }

}

Output:

Object retrieved

Box Volume: 2760

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