Can we deny a java object from serialization other than giving transient keyword

Question

We can avoid serialising fields by using the transient keyword. Is there any other way of doing that?

Answer 1

You can create your own protocol with the Externalizable interface, that in my opinion is a nicer than Serializable since it doesn't contains private methods hooked by the JVM (writeObject and readObject). Instead of implementing the Serializable interface, you can implement Externalizable, which contains two methods:

public void writeExternal(ObjectOutput out) throws IOException;
public void readExternal(ObjectInput in) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException

Unlike using Serializable nothing is provided for free now, though. That is, the protocol is entirely in your hands, overring transient/non triansient fields, etc.