Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

ObjectInputStream

Synopsis

ObjectInputStream deserializes objects, arrays, and other values from a stream that was previously created with an ObjectOutputStream. The readObject( ) method deserializes objects and arrays (which should then be cast to the appropriate type); various other methods read primitive data values from the stream. Note that only objects that implement the Serializable or Externalizable interface can be serialized and deserialized.

A class may implement its own private readObject(ObjectInputStream) method to customize the way it is deserialized. If you define such a method, there are several ObjectInputStream methods you can use to help deserialize the object. defaultReadObject( ) is the easiest. It reads the content of the object just as an ObjectInputStream would normally do. If you wrote additional data before or after the default object contents, you should read that data before or after calling defaultReadObject( ). When working with multiple versions or implementations of a class, you may have to deserialize a set of fields that do not match the fields of your class. In this case, give your class a static field named serialPersistentFields whose value is an array of ObjectStreamField objects that describe the fields to be deserialized. If you do this, your readObject( ) method can call readFields( ) to read the specified fields from the stream and return them in a ObjectInputStream.GetField object. See ObjectStreamField and ObjectInputStream.GetField ...