[java] How to serialize an object into a string

I am able to serialize an object into a file and then restore it again as is shown in the next code snippet. I would like to serialize the object into a string and store into a database instead. Can anyone help me?

LinkedList<Diff_match_patch.Patch> patches = // whatever...
FileOutputStream fileStream = new FileOutputStream("foo.ser");
ObjectOutputStream os = new ObjectOutputStream(fileStream);
os.writeObject(patches1);
os.close();

FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream("foo.ser");
ObjectInputStream oInputStream = new ObjectInputStream(fileInputStream);
Object one = oInputStream.readObject();
LinkedList<Diff_match_patch.Patch> patches3 = (LinkedList<Diff_match_patch.Patch>) one;
os.close();

Take a look at the java.sql.PreparedStatement class, specifically the function

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/sql/PreparedStatement.html#setBinaryStream(int,%20java.io.InputStream)

Then take a look at the java.sql.ResultSet class, specifically the function

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/sql/ResultSet.html#getBinaryStream(int)

Keep in mind that if you are serializing an object into a database, and then you change the object in your code in a new version, the deserialization process can easily fail because your object's signature changed. I once made this mistake with storing a custom Preferences serialized and then making a change to the Preferences definition. Suddenly I couldn't read any of the previously serialized information.

You might be better off writing clunky per property columns in a table and composing and decomposing the object in this manner instead, to avoid this issue with object versions and deserialization. Or writing the properties into a hashmap of some sort, like a java.util.Properties object, and then serializing the properties object which is extremely unlikely to change.

you can use UUEncoding

If you're storing an object as binary data in the database, then you really should use a BLOB datatype. The database is able to store it more efficiently, and you don't have to worry about encodings and the like. JDBC provides methods for creating and retrieving blobs in terms of streams. Use Java 6 if you can, it made some additions to the JDBC API that make dealing with blobs a whole lot easier.

If you absolutely need to store the data as a String, I would recommend XStream for XML-based storage (much easier than XMLEncoder), but alternative object representations might be just as useful (e.g. JSON). Your approach depends on why you actually need to store the object in this way.

Today the most obvious approach is to save the object(s) to JSON.

1. JSON is readable
2. JSON is more readable and easier to work with than XML.
3. A lot of Non-SQL databases that allow storing JSON directly.
4. Your client already communicates with the server using JSON. (If it doesn't, it is very likely a mistake.)

Example using Gson.

Gson gson = new Gson();
Person[] persons = getArrayOfPersons();
String json = gson.toJson(persons);
System.out.println(json);
//output: [{"name":"Tom","age":11},{"name":"Jack","age":12}]
Person[] personsFromJson = gson.fromJson(json, Person[].class);
//...
class Person {
     public String name;
     public int age;
} 

Gson allows converting List directly. Examples can be easily googled. I prefer to convert lists to arrays first.

Simple Solution,worked for me

public static byte[] serialize(Object obj) throws IOException {
    ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    ObjectOutputStream os = new ObjectOutputStream(out);
    os.writeObject(obj);
    return out.toByteArray();
}

How about writing the data to a ByteArrayOutputStream instead of a FileOutputStream?

Otherwise, you could serialize the object using XMLEncoder, persist the XML, then deserialize via XMLDecoder.

Thanks for great and quick replies. I will gives some up votes inmediately to acknowledge your help. I have coded the best solution in my opinion based on your answers.

LinkedList<Patch> patches1 = diff.patch_make(text2, text1);
try {
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    ObjectOutputStream os = new ObjectOutputStream(bos);
    os.writeObject(patches1);
    String serialized_patches1 = bos.toString();
    os.close();


    ByteArrayInputStream bis = new ByteArrayInputStream(serialized_patches1.getBytes());
    ObjectInputStream oInputStream = new ObjectInputStream(bis);
    LinkedList<Patch> restored_patches1 = (LinkedList<Patch>) oInputStream.readObject();            



        // patches1 equals restored_patches1
    oInputStream.close();
} catch(Exception ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}

Note i did not considered using JSON because is less efficient.

Note: I will considered your advice about not storing serialized object as strings in the database but byte[] instead.

Java8 approach, converting Object from/to String, inspired by answer from OscarRyz. For de-/encoding, java.util.Base64 is required and used.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ObjectInputStream;
import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Base64;
import java.util.Optional;

final class ObjectHelper {

  private ObjectHelper() {}

  static Optional<String> convertToString(final Serializable object) {
    try (final ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
      ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos)) {
      oos.writeObject(object);
      return Optional.of(Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString(baos.toByteArray()));
    } catch (final IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      return Optional.empty();
    }
  }

  static <T extends Serializable> Optional<T> convertFrom(final String objectAsString) {
    final byte[] data = Base64.getDecoder().decode(objectAsString);
    try (final ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(data))) {
      return Optional.of((T) ois.readObject());
    } catch (final IOException | ClassNotFoundException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      return Optional.empty();
    }
  }
}

How about persisting the object as a blob

XStream provides a simple utility for serializing/deserializing to/from XML, and it's very quick. Storing XML CLOBs rather than binary BLOBS is going to be less fragile, not to mention more readable.

You can use the build in classes sun.misc.Base64Decoder and sun.misc.Base64Encoder to convert the binary data of the serialize to a string. You das not need additional classes because it are build in.

Use a O/R framework such as hibernate

The serialised stream is just a sequence of bytes (octets). So the question is how to convert a sequence of bytes to a String, and back again. Further it needs to use a limited set of character codes if it is going to be stored in a database.

The obvious solution to the problem is to change the field to a binary LOB. If you want to stick with a characer LOB, then you'll need to encode in some scheme such as base64, hex or uu.