Deserializing multiple objects from a single file [duplicate]

Answer 1

It's probably better to write the number of Vehicules that are in the file at the beginning, and let that control how many you read.

If you want to do it the way you are doing it, then you will have to try/catch an IOException

[also btw, this isn't a txt file]

Answer 2

Ok this is how it finally worked.
I deserialized everything in the file to an ArrayList; added the new object and while serializing, I added each element of the ArrayList to the file [erasing the previous entries by using (new FileOutputStream(new File("Vehicule.txt"),false) ].
Finally I added a null explicitly to the file so as to help with the deserializing.
Also while creating the file for the first time with createNewFile, I added a null to the file.

Answer 3

try {
    if(!f.exists()) f.createNewFile();
} catch(IOException e) {
}

You don't need any of that. new FileOutputStream() will create the file.

new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(f,true))

You can't append to an ObjectOutputStream. There are headers in there that ObjectInputStream won't understand if it encounters them in the middle of a stream.

while( (v = (Vehicule)ois.readObject()) != null )

Is there a better way to check for the end of the file?

There's nothing in the Javadoc about readobject() returning null at EOS. readObject() returns null if and only if you wrote a null.

The correct technique is to catch EOFException, close the stream, and break out of the loop.

Answer 4

If you are going to use multiple appended ObjectOutputStreams, then I believe this might help (along with making sure you delete the file each time you run your test!):

Why can't a file that contains multiple appended ObjectOutputStreams be deserialized by one ObjectInputStream?

Using the default implementation of serialization, there must be a one-to-one mapping between ObjectOutputStream construction and ObjectInputStream construction. ObjectOutputStream constructor writes a stream header and ObjectInputStream reads this stream header. A workaround is to subclass ObjectOutputStream and override writeStreamHeader(). The overriding writeStreamHeader() should call the super writeStreamHeader method if it is the first write to the file and it should call ObjectOutputStream.reset() if it is appending to a pre-existing ObjectOutputStream within the file.

Otherwise I would suggest you add the objects to a List and then serialize it with a single ObjectOutputStream.

For example:

    Vehicule v1 = new Vehicule();
    Vehicule v2 = new Vehicule();
    List<Vehicule> vehicules = Arrays.asList(v1, v2);

    // serialize the list of Vehicules
    File f = new File("vehicule.txt");
    try {
        ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(
                new FileOutputStream(f));
        oos.writeObject(vehicules);
        oos.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace(); // handle this appropriately
    }

    // deserialize the list of Vehicules
    try {
        ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(
                new FileInputStream(f));
        List<Vehicule> deserializedVehicles = (List<Vehicule>) ois.readObject();
        ois.close();
        System.out.println("list size = " + deserializedVehicles.size());
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace(); // handle this appropriately
    }

For me, this outputs:

list size = 2

Answer 5

Just serialize/deserlialize an ArrayList<Vehicle> (rather than trying to stuff multiple object into a single file).