Re: FindBugs complaining about non-serializable field although everything looks Serializable

From:

Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:52:10 -0800

Message-ID:

<e5FPq.74066$ed2.40342@newsfe05.iad>

On 1/12/12 8:40 AM, laredotornado@zipmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I'm using Java 1.6. My FindBugs tool is giving me this error ...

     Non-transient non-serializable instance field in serializable
class
     Class com.myco.clearing.common.xml.Node defines non-transient non-
serializable instance field children

The class and its private fields that Findbugs is complaining about
are below ...

     public class Node implements Serializable, Comparable<Node>,
Cloneable {

<snip>
private List<Node> children;

     /**
     * Parent node
     */
    private Node parent;
    /**
     * Node attributes
     */
    private List<Attribute> attributes;

I'm assuming that "List" is the java.util.List interface, which does not
extend Serializable. Many implementations *are* serializable, but the
interface itself is not. FindBugs is warning you that it is possible to
set the "children" and "attributes" fields to List implementations that
are not serializable.