Question

I’m new to Java.io.Serializable, so my apologies if this is a completely newb question. What I’d like to do is implement readObject() and writeObject() such that the absolute minimum of data is serialized. I’d basically like to only write a few primitives and no information about object identity and no information about the Object graph, as in my application I’ll know all that information at the time I deserialize this object.
I hope this makes sense! I do apologize for the high-level nature of the question as I’m quite new at this and may not have the correct vocabulary here.

Answer 1

You can use transient word for declaring fields so they won’t be serialized.
Then you won’t have to implement read/writeObject youself – it will serialize only what you want to be serialized.

More on this here: http://www.javabeat.net/examples/2009/02/18/what-is-transient-keyword-in-java/