Re: object stream and byte array conversion

From:

Knute Johnson <nospam@rabbitbrush.frazmtn.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.help

Date:

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:30:48 -0800

Message-ID:

<sR26h.37420$%f4.34000@newsfe09.phx>

George3 via JavaKB.com wrote:

Knute, I want to dump the binary information of Java serialized object for
debug purpose. This is why I need to treat object input or output stream to
normal input/output stream to read/write by byte basis. Any ideas?

regards,
George

Knute Johnson wrote:

Hi Knute,

I want to get the byte[] format representation of an object in object input
stream. Any ideas or comments?

So you want to turn some arbitrary object, that isn't a byte[], into a
byte[]? You can't do that.

I thought you wanted to write byte[] to an ObjectOutputStream and then
read it back from an ObjectInputStream. For example, sending a byte[]
as an Object across a socket connection.

Interestingly enough, it appears that you can't do that. I thought you
could read a byte[] from an ObjectInputStream of any object but that
isn't true.

The simplest solution I can see is to write your object to a file and
then read it back, converting it to a String or just bytes as necessary.
Don't use an ObjectInputStream to do that, just a regular InputStream
or Reader if you want to convert it to a String.

Maybe the real question is, what is it you are trying to debug that
makes you want to do this?

The most interesting thing about this is that it doesn't throw a
ClassNotFound or other type of exception when you try to read the bytes,
it just reports end of file even though there is unread data in the file.

--

Knute Johnson
email s/nospam/knute/