Documentation Version: 3.2-ee - Publication Date : Mar 21, 2014

Data Serializable

For a faster serialization of objects, Hazelcast recommends to implement com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.IdentifiedDataSerializable which is slightly better version of com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.DataSerializable.

Here is an example of a class implementing com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.DataSerializable interface.

public class Address implements com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.DataSerializable {
    private String street;
    private int zipCode;
    private String city;
    private String state;

    public Address() {}

    //getters setters..

    public void writeData(ObjectDataOutput out) throws IOException {
        out.writeUTF(street);
        out.writeInt(zipCode);
        out.writeUTF(city);
        out.writeUTF(state);
    }

    public void readData(ObjectDataInput in) throws IOException {
        street    = in.readUTF();
        zipCode = in.readInt();
        city    = in.readUTF();
        state    = in.readUTF();
    }
}

Let's take a look at another example which is encapsulating a DataSerializable field.

public class Employee implements com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.DataSerializable {
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    private int age;
    private double salary;
    private Address address; //address itself is DataSerializable

    public Employee() {}

    //getters setters..

    public void writeData(ObjectDataOutput out) throws IOException {
        out.writeUTF(firstName);
        out.writeUTF(lastName);
        out.writeInt(age);
        out.writeDouble (salary);
        address.writeData (out);
    }

    public void readData (ObjectDataInput in) throws IOException {
        firstName = in.readUTF();
        lastName  = in.readUTF();
        age       = in.readInt();
        salary       = in.readDouble();
        address   = new Address();
        // since Address is DataSerializable let it read its own internal state
        address.readData (in);
    }
}

As you can see, since address field itself is DataSerializable, it is calling address.writeData(out) when writing and address.readData(in) when reading. Also note that, the order of writing and reading fields should be the same. While Hazelcast serializes a DataSerializable, it writes the className first and when de-serializes it, className is used to instantiate the object using reflection.

IdentifiedDataSerializable

To avoid the reflection and long class names, IdentifiedDataSerializable can be used instead of DataSerializable. Note that, IdentifiedDataSerializable extends DataSerializable and introduces two new methods.

• int getId();
• int getFactoryId();

IdentifiedDataSerializable uses getId() instead of className and uses getFactoryId() to load the class given the Id. To complete the implementation, a com.hazelcast.nio.serialization.DataSerializableFactory should also be implemented and registered into SerializationConfig which can be accessed from Config.getSerializationConfig(). Factory's responsibility is to return an instance of the right IdentifiedDataSerializable object, given the Id. So far this is the most efficient way of Serialization that Hazelcast supports of the shelf.