J.12. Introduction to Object Serialization

Java provides object serialization for writing entire objects to a stream and reading entire objects from a stream. A so-called serialized object is an object represented as a sequence of bytes that includes the object’s data as well as information about the object’s type and the types of data stored in the object. After a serialized object has been written into a file, it can be read from the file and deserialized—that is, the type information and bytes that represent the object and its data can be used to recreate the object in memory.