Java: Serialization/ Deserialization to/from XML instead of binary

Question

I have a complex set of data models that currently implement java.io.Serializable, and I have successfully serialized and deserialized them with ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream.

However, the result are binary files (as expected), and I was wondering if Java supports serialization and deserialization in the same manner to a non-binary format, such as XML.

I see that C# has this feature: XML vs Binary performance for Serialization/Deserialization.

Performance speed/ efficiency is not a consideration in this case.

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '10 at 02:40

5

Further, I would suggest you to look at Simple and XStream frameworks. I found both good. You can choose to go with either one, or may be XmlEncoder as suggested by Jack.

answered Feb 08 '10 at 02:40

Adeel Ansari

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I'm chiming in for XStream too. – aberrant80 Feb 08 '10 at 03:15
Simple if far more performant that XStream, at worst case its 2x faster. Also, for very large object graphs Simple beats Java object serialization. – ng. Mar 11 '10 at 11:30

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '10 at 01:40

4

Yes, Java has it and it's called XML Encoding. Check it out here!

The approach is quite similar to the normal serialization..

answered Feb 08 '10 at 01:40

Jack

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Java: Serialization/ Deserialization to/from XML instead of binary

2 Answers2