Serializing Objects - Beginning Java 2 SDK - page 480

Reading Basic Data from an Object Stream
The ObjectInputStream class defines methods for reading basic types of data back from an object
stream. They are:

readBoolean() readByte() readChar() readShort()

readInt() readLong() readFloat() readDouble()

They each return a value of the corresponding type and they can all throw an IOException if an error
occurs, or an EOFException if the end-of-file is reached.

Just to make sure that the process of serializing and deserializing objects is clear, we will use it in a
simple example.

Using Object Serialization

Back in Chapter 6, we produced an example that created PolyLine objects containing Point objects
in a generalized linked list. This is a good basis for demonstrating how effectively serialization takes care
of handling objects that are members of objects. We can just modify the class TryPolyLine to
use serialization.

Try It Out - Serializing a Linked List
The classes PolyLine , Point , and LinkedList and the inner class ListItem are exactly the same
as in Chapter 6 except that we need to implement the Serializable interface in each of them.

The PolyLine definition needs to be amended to:

import java.io.Serializable;

public final class PolyLine implements Serializable {
// Class definition as before...
}

The Point definition needs a similar change:

import java.io.Serializable;

public class Point implements Serializable {
// Class definition as before...
}

The LinkedList class and its inner class likewise:

import java.io.Serializable;

public class LinkedList implements Serializable {
// Class definition as before...