Externalizable.java revision f5597e626ecf7949d249dea08c1a2964d890ec11 
1/*
2 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3 *  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
4 *  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5 *  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6 *  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7 *  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
8 *
9 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10 *
11 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15 *  limitations under the License.
16 */
17
18package java.io;
19
20/**
21 * Defines an interface for classes that want to be serializable, but have their
22 * own binary representation.
23 */
24public interface Externalizable extends Serializable {
25    /**
26     * Reads the next object from the ObjectInput <code>input</code>.
27     *
28     * @param input
29     *            the ObjectInput from which the next object is read.
30     * @throws IOException
31     *             if an error occurs attempting to read from {@code input}.
32     * @throws ClassNotFoundException
33     *             if the class of the instance being loaded cannot be found.
34     */
35    public void readExternal(ObjectInput input) throws IOException,
36            ClassNotFoundException;
37
38    /**
39     * Writes the receiver to the ObjectOutput <code>output</code>.
40     *
41     * @param output
42     *            the ObjectOutput to write the object to.
43     * @throws IOException
44     *             if an error occurs attempting to write to {@code output}.
45     */
46    public void writeExternal(ObjectOutput output) throws IOException;
47}
48