Java Enterprise Best Practices

Always Unit-Test Marshalling Code

Because marshalling in RMI is always based on streams, it’s very easy to write unit tests for your marshalling code. And doing so can save you a lot of headaches as you modify your codebase. All you need to do is use streams that map to byte arrays in memory. For example, the following code creates a deep copy of an object and then makes sure the deep copy is equal to the original instance:

public static boolean testSerialization(Serializable object) throws Exception {
	Object secondObject = makeDeepCopy(object);
	boolean hashCodeComparison = (object.hashCode() == secondObject.hashCode(  ));
	boolean equalsComparison = object.equals(secondObject);
	return hashCodeComparison && equalsComparison;
}

private static object makeDeepCopy(Serializable object) throws Exception{
	ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream(  );
	ObjectOutputStream objectOutputStream = new
         ObjectOutputStream(byteArrayOutputStream);
	objectOutputStream.writeObject(object);
	objectOutputStream.flush(  );
	byte[] bytes = byteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray(  );
	ByteArrayInputStream byteArrayInputStream= new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes);
	ObjectInputStream objectInputStream = new 
         ObjectInputStream(byteArrayInputStream);
	SerializationTest deepCopy = (SerializationTest) objectInputStream.readObject(  );
	return deepCopy;
}

If you insert tests for each value object in your codebase, and then run them occasionally (for example, as unit tests in either Cactus or JUnit), you’ll ...