Java: recommended solution for deep cloning/copying an instance

Question

I\'m wondering if there is a recommended way of doing deep clone/copy of instance in java.

I have 3 solutions in mind, but I can have miss some, and I\'d like to ha

Answer 1

Use XStream toXML/fromXML in memory. Extremely fast and has been around for a long time and is going strong. Objects don't need to be Serializable and you don't have use reflection (although XStream does). XStream can discern variables that point to the same object and not accidentally make two full copies of the instance. A lot of details like that have been hammered out over the years. I've used it for a number of years and it is a go to. It's about as easy to use as you can imagine.

new XStream().toXML(myObj)

or

new XStream().fromXML(myXML)

To clone,

new XStream().fromXML(new XStream().toXML(myObj))

More succinctly:

XStream x = new XStream();
Object myClone = x.fromXML(x.toXML(myObj));