Faster Java Serialization

Copyright (C) 2006 by Leonardo "Bubble" Mesquita

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Overview

The goal of the project is to enable faster serialization by generating bytecodes on the fly to serialize objects.

When an object is serialized, its class is inspected and a class that implements the Serializer interface is generated. This class is tailor made to serialize the fields of the given object's class directly.

To serialize objects to a ByteBuffer, all you have to do is add jserial.jar to the classpath and use the SerializationContext class:

	...
	SerializationContext context = new SerializationContext();
	ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1024);
	context.serialize(myObject, buffer);
	...

Serializes myObject. Note that, in order to be serialized, objects must implement java.io.Serializable

To reconstruct the object, all you have to do is use the DeserializationContext class:

	...
	DeserializationContext context = new DeserializationContext();
	MyObject reconstructedObject = (MyObject)context.deserialize(buffer);
	...

Reads the reconstructedObject. In the meantime, the data in the ByteBuffer can easily be written to a file or sent through a network using Java NIO.

This project uses a modified version of Javassist-3.3 to perform code-generation on-the-fly.

Limitations

• Implement java.io.Serializable
• Have a non private no-args constructor

Features not yet supported include:

• Custom serialization through java.io.Externalizable
• Custom serialization through writeObject, readObject, writeReplace, readResolve or any other special serialization method.
• Inner/Local/Anonymous class serialization.
• Serialization of non-static final fields, though no error will arise when serializing objects that have such fields.

Acknowledgements

• Tiago Luz Pinto, for developing the original concept of "code-generated serialization", and being a great supporter of this project. (Don't worry, your name will be in the paper, if I ever get it done ;-D )
• Rodrigo Damazio, for inspiration and motivation. I don't think I'd have gone so far if it weren't for him.
• Daniel Sperry: for "sharing in the excitement of discover without vain attempts to claim priority" ;-)
• All the folks at Hoplon Infotainment, in special Carlos Knippschield, with whom I spent many long hours generating code and serializing stuff... :-D
• And finally, most of all, Marina Signorini, my beloved girlfriend, who put up with the long hours I have dedicated to this project in my spare time.