Java object serializer which is based on field order - java

Does anyone know a reflection based Java object graph serializer, which stores the fields identified by field order instead name of the field? This is what I want to do:
load a JSON file with Jackson JSON deserializer
save it in binary format which doesn't contain the field names...
load the previously serialized object with the OBFUSCATED version of the application.
The serialized content won't be transferred to any other JVM. Excluding serialized POJOs from obfuscation is not an option for now.

Protostuff by default orders fields from top to bottom as defined in your pojo. You can additionally control the field number using annotations.
Note that the order is not guaranteed on some (non-sun) vms (especially dalvik).
Sun jdk6 or higher is recommended for guaranteed ordering.

Related

Does Jackson use stable binary serialization?

I have an external key-value storage, which contains a set of binary values per key. These binary values are Scala objects serialized using Jackson 2.5 with a ScalaPlugin.
To preserve set semantics in the storage, binary representation of an object should be stable, i.e. serializing it two times should result in the same sequence of bytes. Does Jackson have this guarantee? If it uses JSON serialization as an intermediate step for example, there is no node ordering, so binary serialization will not be stable.
This may get even more tricky if an object contains unordered structures internally (like sets or maps). Does Jackson handle that?
If not, are there sound alternatives?
Update:
I have found com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature.ORDER_MAP_ENTRIES_BY_KEYS which resolves a part of the question.
You can use the option SORT_PROPERTIES_ALPHABETICALLY as mentioned in the answers of this question to achieve stable serialization (together with the option ORDER_MAP_ENTRIES_BY_KEYS that you already mentioned).
Some more background is explained in these emails:
"... in absence of explicit declaration (via #JsonPropertyOrder), and general mechanisms (sort-alphabetically; Object Id and Type Id preceding other properties), there is no defined ordering."
and
"One thing to note is that Oracle did change behavior of JDK 7, such that previously stable ordering of methods and fields returned by Introspection become arbitrary." ... "Existing default ordering is based on simple traversal and ordering that JDK provides; ...".
(copied from the email from Tatu Saloranta).

Java serialization to string

I have the following declaration of the static type Object:
Integer typeId;
//Obtaining typeId
Object containerObject = ContainerObjectFactory.create(typeId);
The factory can produce different types of container objects, e.g. Date, Integer, BigDecimal and so forth.
Now, after creating the containerObejct I need to serialize it to an object of type String and store it into a database with hibernate. I'm not going to provide Object-relational mapping because it doesn't relate to the question directly.
Well, what I want to do is to serialize the containerObject depending on it runtime-type and desirialize it later with the type it was serialized. Is it ever possible? Could I use xml-serialization for those sakes?
There are numerous alternatives, and your question is quite broad. You could:
use the native Java serialisation, which is binary, and then Base64 encode it
use an XML serialisation library, such as XStream
use a JSON serialisation library, such as Gson
One key feature you mention is that the object type needs to be embedded in the serialised data. Native Java serialisation embeds the type in the data so this is a good candidate. This is a double-edged sword however, as this makes the data brittle - if at some time in the future you changed the fully qualified class name then you'd no longer be able to deserialise the object.
Gson, on the other hand, doesn't embed the type information, and so you'd have to store both the JSON and the object type in order to deserialise the object.
XML and JSON have advantages that they're a textual format, so even without deserialising it, you can use your human eyes to see what it is. Base64 encoded Java serialisation however, is an unintelligible blob of characters.
There are multiple ways, but you need custom serialization scheme, e.g.:
D|25.01.2015
I|12345
BD|123456.123452436
where the first part of the String represents the type and the second part represents the data. You can even use some binary serialization scheme for this.

Serializing objects with changing class source code

Note: Due to the lack of questions like this on SO, I've decided to put one up myself as a Q&A
Serializing objects (using an ObjectOutputStream and an ObjectInputStream) is a method for storing an instance of a Java Object as data that can be later deserialized for use. This can cause problems and frustration when the Class used to deserialize the data does not remain the same (source-code changes; program updates).
So how can an Object be serialized and deserialized with an updated / downgraded version of a Class?
Here are a few common ways of serializing an object that can be deserialized in a backwards-compatible way.
1. Store the data in the JSON format using import and export methods designed to save all fields needed to recreate the instance. This can be made backwards-compatible by including a version key that allows for an update algorithm to be called if the version is too low. A common library for this is the Google Gson library which can represent Java objects in JSON as well as normally editing a JSON file.
2. Use the built-in java Properties class in a way similar to the method described above. Properties objects can be later stored using a stream (store()) written as a regular Java Properties file, or saved in XML (storeToXML()).
3. Sometimes simple objects can be easily represented with key-value pairs in a place where storing them in a JSON, XML, or Properties file is either too complicated or not neccessary (overkill one could say). In this case, an effective way of serializing the object could be using the ObjectOutputStream class to serialize a HashMap object containing key-value pairs where the key could be a String and the value could be an Object (HashMap<String,Object>). This allows for all of the object's fields to be stored as well as including a version key while providing much versatility.
Note: Although serializing an object using the ObjectOutputStream for persistence storage is normally considered bad convention, it can be used either way as long as the class' source code remains the same.
Also Note about versioning: Changes to a class can be safely made without disrupting deserialization using an ObjectOutputStream as long as they are a compatible change. As mentioned in the Versioning of Serializable Objects chapter of the Object Serialization Specification:
A compatible change is a change that does not affect the contract
between the class and its callers.

Extra/dupe members in SOAP response prevents serialization (Axis, Java, Gson)

I am using Axis to call a SOAP-based web service. I'm then trying to serialize the returned remote object as JSON, using the Google Gson library.
The serialization to JSON fails, with Gson complaining that "there are multiple elements with the name __equalsCalc()).
When I inspect the returned object in my IDE (Eclipse), I can see that this is true -- the returned object has three members called __equalsCalc() and another three called __hashCode.
I know from looking around that these are added by WSDL2Java (I think) in order to avoid recursion. My question is, why are there THREE of each? And how can I get the serializer to ignore these? They're not actually part of the object's definition (it's called a RemoteProject, for reference). Can I do something hackish like cast the RemoteProject to a RemoteProject to get it to drop those members?
This turns out to be not too hard to solve. I have multiple copies of the same instance var because the class being serialized is shadowing fields of the same name from superclasses. Since I don't care about these fields, the best approach in Gson is to write a custom ExckusionStrategy which can selectively ignore fields based on their name:
http://google-gson.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/gson/docs/javadocs/com/google/gson/ExclusionStrategy.html
I don't know GSon.
With Jackson, you can annotate properties (i.e - fields that have getters/setters according to Java bean convention) with #JsonIgnore.
This way you can prevent issues like recursion/no matching setter or getter and so on...
Try to find out if you have the same at GSon or use Jackson.

Best approach to object XML Serialization in Java

I am writing the service to implement the audit in our application wherein users can view the status of a particular entity before and after any modification and should also be able to roll it back. We have decided to store the XML Serialized object in the databse in XML_TYPE column.
I am new to serialization, I don't know how to achieve the same, any changes needs to be done to the object to be serialized or do we need to have any mapping XML. Can someone please suggest some good libraries, I understand there are lot of those available in the market like JAXB, JIBX, JABX, XStream and etc. Which one would be good and how to use it.
Any help is highly appreciated.
Regards,
Ravi.
Of course, the best for entities is having POJO's (Plain Old Java Objects). No strange properties, references or methods. It simplifies serializing and keeps your model objects neutral from frameworks and strange layers like persistence, UI, remote-access and so on.
XStream: simplicity
I'd suggest using XStream library for serializing. It tries to be the simplest way to serialize and deserialize objects to XML.
You should think searialization this way:
indicate what class is the object
try to serialize each property
So, these are the two problems to resolve in serializing. XStream lets you create a serializer (XStream class), (OPTIONALLY) indicate what tag name use for each class and (OPTIONALLY) indicate the aliases for properties.
So if you have something like:
package pack;
Person
+ mom: Person
+ dad: Person
it will write with no configuration:
<pack.Person>
<mom>
<pack.Person>
...
</pack.Person>
</mom>
<dad>
<pack.Person>
...
</pack.Person>
</dad>
</pack.Person>
But if you tell it to map package.Person to it will use that tag. You can tell it to write property "mom" as "mother" and things like that.
XStream xs = new XStream();
xs.alias("person", Person.class);
xs.aliasAttribute(Person.class, "mom", "mother");
References
XStream also lets you indicate what kind of references you want:
no references: serialize an object
each time it founds it in the object
tree
absolute references: the second time
an object is found it saves a
reference using the absolute path of
the first instance
(/people/person[4]/teacher)
relative references: the same, but
using a relative reference from this
point (../../person[4]/teacher)
JAXB is the standard. In the simplest (and most common case) you just annotate your entities with JAXB annotations, and use a Marshaller to marshal the object to XML.
You can use either Sun's reference implementation, or Apache JaxMe.
XStream is a good alternative as far as I know, although I haven't used it.

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