Java object Serialization is an API provided by Java Library stack as a means to serialize Java objects. Serialization is a process to convert objects into a writable byte stream. Once converted into a byte-stream, these objects can be written to a file. The reverse process of this is called de-serialization.
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A Java object is serializable if its class or any of its superclasses implement either the
java.io.Serializable
interface or its subinterface, java.io.Externalizable
.1. Java Object
2. Writing and Reading objects in Java
The objects can be converted into byte-stream using
java.io.ObjectOutputStream
. In order to enable writing of objects into a file using ObjectOutputStream
, it is mandatory that the concerned class implements Serializable
interface as shown in the class definition below.Reading objects in Java are similar to writing object using
ObjectOutputStreamObjectInputStream
. Below example shows the complete cycle of writing objects and reading objects in Java.On reading objects, the
ObjectInputStream
directly tries to map all the attributes into the class into which we try to cast the read object. If it is unable to map the respective object exactly then it throws a ClassNotFound
exception.Let us now understand the writing and reading process using an example. We are using the
Person
class shown above as an object.WriterReader.java
On executing the above code, we get below output: