Java serialization over network

Its pretty simple, actually. Just make your objects serializable, and create an ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream that are connected to whatever underlying stream you have, say FileInputStream, etc. Then just write() whatever object you want to the stream and read it on the other side.

Heres an example for you.

Java provides (binary) object serialization using the ObjectOutputStream (and ObjectInputStream). You can just writeObject() into the stream and readObject() on the other end. All you need to do for this to work is implement the Serializable interface.

But rather than doing that manually, you may be interested in taken it one level up and using Remote Method Invocation. With RMI you can call methods on objects that live in another JVM, and all the serialization and networking happens under the hood.

And for the sake of completeness, there is also XML bean serialization, if you cannot use the binary format. That XML format is very generic (read: verbose and ugly), but there are some popular libraries (like XStream) that create alternative XML serializations.

you can create object streams using the java api and send any serializable object. but youll have to mind that these go unencrypted through the network:

on the sender's side:

CustomObject objectToSend=new CustomObject();
Socket s = new Socket("yourhostname", 1234);
ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(s.getOutputStream());
out.writeObject(objectToSend);
out.flush();

and on the receiving end:

ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(1234);
Socket s = server.accept();
ObjectInputStream in = new ObjectInputStream(s.getInputStream());
CustomObject objectReceived = (CustomObject) in.readObject();