I am trying to understand object serialization better, so I am practicing with some code I got from my textbook. (My textbook doesn’t explain how to read and write/append objects to a serialization file every time the program starts, which is what I need to do.) I took their program, which just overwrites existing data in a file with the objects from the current session, and add code to it so that it will append the objects and read the whole file instead. I found something really useful here: Appending to an ObjectOutputStream but even if I create a subclass of ObjectOutputStream, override the writeStreamHeader method, and call this subclass if the file already exists, which is what they did, it still throws a CorruptedStreamException. My guess is that I would need to set the pointer back to the beginning of the file, but that doesn’t seem to be necessary as there is only one ObjectOutputStream. So, my question is, what else could I possibly need to do?
EDIT: Here is some code.
WriteData.java
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class WriteData
{
private int number;
private String name;
private float money;
private ObjectInputStream testopen;
private ObjectOutputStream output; //This is for the output. Make sure that
//this object gets an instance of FileOutputStream so that it can write objects
//to a FILE.
private AppendObjectOutputStream appendobjects;
static Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
static DataClass d;
public void openfile()
{
//Try opening a file (it must have the ".ser" extension).
try
{
//output = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("test.ser"));
testopen = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream("test.ser"));
}
//If there is a failure, throw the necessary error.
catch (IOException exception)
{
try
{
output = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("test.ser"));
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
} //end case createfile
if (testopen != null)
{
try
{
testopen.close();
appendobjects = new AppendObjectOutputStream(
new FileOutputStream("test.ser"));
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
public void writedata()
{
//write the data until the user enters a sentry value.
System.out.println("Enter CTRL + z to stop input.\n");
System.out.print ("Enter the data in the following format: " +
"account_number name balance\n->");
while (input.hasNext())
{
System.out.print ("Enter the data in the following format: " +
"account_number name balance\n->");
try
{
number = input.nextInt();
name = input.next();
money = input.nextFloat();
//Make object with that data
d = new DataClass(number, name, money);
//write it to the file
if (output != null)
{
output.writeObject(d);
}
else if (appendobjects != null)
{
appendobjects.writeObject(d);
}
}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("Error writing to file.");
return;
}
}
System.out.println("\n");
} //end writedata
public void closefile()
{
try
{
if (output != null)
{
output.close();
}
else if (appendobjects != null)
{
appendobjects.close();
}
}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("Error closing file. Take precautions");
System.exit(1);
}
}
}
DataClass.java
import java.io.Serializable;
public class DataClass implements Serializable
{
private int someint;
private String somestring;
private float somefloat;
public DataClass(int number, String name, float amount)
{
setint(number);
setstring(name);
setfloat(amount);
}
public void setint(int i)
{
this.someint = i;
}
public int getint()
{
return someint;
}
public void setstring(String s)
{
this.somestring = s;
}
public String getstring()
{
return somestring;
}
public void setfloat(float d)
{
this.somefloat = d;
}
public float getfloat()
{
return somefloat;
}
}
AppendObjectOutputStream.java
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
public class AppendObjectOutputStream extends ObjectOutputStream
{
public AppendObjectOutputStream(FileOutputStream arg0) throws IOException
{
super(arg0);
// TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
}
//This is a function that is default in ObjectOutputStream. It just writes the
//header to the file, by default. Here, we are just going to reset the
//ObjectOutputStream
@Override
public void writeStreamHeader() throws IOException
{
reset();
}
}
ReadData.java
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class ReadData
{
private FileInputStream f;
private ObjectInputStream input; //We should the constructor for this
//object an object of FileInputStream
private Scanner lines;
public void openfile()
{
try
{
f = new FileInputStream("test.ser");
input = new ObjectInputStream (f);
//input.reset();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
System.exit(1);
}
}
public void readdata()
{
DataClass d;
System.out.printf("%-15s%-12s%10s\n", "Account Number", "First Name",
"Balance");
try
{
while (true)
{
d = (DataClass)input.readObject(); //define d
//read data in from d
System.out.printf("%-15d%-12s%10.2f\n", d.getint(), d.getstring(),
d.getfloat());
}
}
catch (EOFException eof)
{
return;
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException e)
{
System.err.println("Unable to create object");
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void closefile()
{
try
{
if (input != null)
{
input.close();
}
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
System.err.println("Error closing file.");
System.exit(1);
}
}
}
SerializationTest.java
public class SerializationTest
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
ReadData r = new ReadData();
WriteData w = new WriteData();
w.openfile();
w.writedata();
w.closefile();
r.openfile();
r.readdata();
r.closefile();
}
}
I suggest to do it this way
it definitely works.