Serialization is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored or transmitted and reconstructed later. It involves converting a data object into a series of bytes that can be stored or transmitted and then recreating the object when needed using the reverse process of deserialization. Serialization is used in various applications, including:
-
Storing data: Serialization allows data to be stored in a format that can be easily retrieved and used later.
-
Transmitting data: Serialization allows data to be transmitted over a network or between different applications.
-
Sharing objects: Serialization allows objects to be shared between different applications or different parts of the same application.
Serialization can be done in different formats, such as JSON, XML, HDF5, and Python’s pickle, for different purposes. In Java, only the objects of those classes that are implementing java.io.Serializable interface can be serialized. The opposite operation, extracting a data structure from a series of bytes, is deserialization (also called unserialization or unmarshalling) .
