Object Serialization for Programming Language Technology and Paradigms | CMSC 433, Study notes of Programming Languages

Download Object Serialization for Programming Language Technology and Paradigms | CMSC 433 and more Study notes Programming Languages in PDF only on Docsity!

Object Serialization

Say you have a bunch of data

• That you want to:
  • Save to a file, or
  • Send over a tcp connection
• What are your options

Structured data

• What if you want to send structured data? - E.g., a HashMap from Strings to integers
• Or even more complicated stuff
  • A sequence of commands to an IMAP server
  • A graph

Options

• Develop a text based format
  • Designed for human readability
  • Designed for machine readability (e.g., XML)
• Some binary format
  • Custom, or
  • VM / library generated

Java object serialization

• You can decorate any OutputStream with an ObjectOutputStream - Allows you to write ints, floats, longs, … - And (Serializable) Objects
• Decorate an InputStream with an ObjectInputStream to read it in

Many things are serializable

• Strings, Integers, most collections
  • Although a collection can only be serialized if the things contained in the collection are serializable
• You can make your own classes serializable

Cycles

Graphs and cycles are

handled

• Object serialization handles graphs and cycles - When reconstructed, object graph is isomorphic to original