Serialize java objects using GZip streams (GZIPInputStream and GZIPOutputStream)

The code from this article was refactored on 2021-01-03. It now makes use of the “Try with resources” Java feature.

The process of converting an object into an associated sequence of bits, so that we can store it in a file, a memory buffer or share it across a network, with the sole purpose of later resurrecting it, is called Serialization . Wikipedia offers a nice insight of what serialization is, so if you have time, please check this article . If this is the first time you hear about this concept you can check the official java documentation on this topic .

Recently I had to write a Serialization mechanism for a hobby application of mine . I had some very big objects (graphs represented as matrices) that had to be somehow stored as files for later usage .

Instead of writing them directly on the disk, I preferred to zip them in the process.

The objects must support serialization, so our class implements java.io.Serializable .

java.io.Serializable is a “marker interface”, this means it doesn’t contain any abstract methods, so there’s nothing to implement.

package net.andreinc.gzipserialization;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;

import static net.andreinc.mockneat.unit.types.Ints.ints;

// The class to be serialised
public class BigOne implements Serializable  {

    // Randomly generates a list<list<int>>
    // every int value from is either 0 or 1
    // rows = 1<<12 = 4096
    // cols = 1<<12 = 4096
    //
    // See www.mockneat.com 
    public final List<List<Integer>> bigOne =
            ints().from(new int[]{0, 1})
                    .list(1<<12)
                    .list(LinkedList::new, 1<<12)
                    .get();

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;
        BigOne bigOne1 = (BigOne) o;
        return bigOne.equals(bigOne1.bigOne);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(bigOne);
    }
}

The BigOne class (not a recommended name for a class) encapsulates a bi-dimensional List of size [1 << 12][1 << 12].

This means the array has 4096 * 4096 = 1 << 24 elements = 16777216 elements (it’s enough to prove the point).

And the Serializer class:

package net.andreinc.gzipserialization;

import java.io.*;
import java.util.zip.GZIPInputStream;
import java.util.zip.GZIPOutputStream;

import static net.andreinc.mockneat.unit.types.Ints.ints;

public abstract class Serializer {

    enum Type {
        CLASSIC,
        GZIP;
    }

    /**
     * Serialize an object {@code T} on the disk.
     *
     * @param type If 'GZIP' the object will be also zipped before serialisation.
     * @param object The object to be serialised
     * @param path The path where to save the object
     * @param <T> The generic type of the object
     *
     * @throws IOException If there are access problems with the specified path
     */
    public static <T> void save(Type type, T object, String path) throws IOException {
        try(ObjectOutputStream oos = (type == Type.GZIP) ?
                new ObjectOutputStream(new GZIPOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(path))) :
                new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(path));
        ) {
            oos.writeObject(object);
            oos.flush();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Loads an object from the disk
     *
     * @param type If 'GZIP' the object will be first unzipped before deserialization
     * @param c The class of the object for safe-casting
     * @param path The path from where to read the object
     * @param <T> The generic type fo the object
     * @return The object from the disk
     *
     * @throws IOException
     * @throws ClassNotFoundException
     */
    public static <T> T load(Type type, Class<T> c, String path) 
            throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {
        try(ObjectInputStream ois = (type == Type.GZIP) ? 
                new ObjectInputStream(new GZIPInputStream(new FileInputStream(path))) :
                new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(path));
        ) {
            return c.cast(ois.readObject());
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {

        BigOne bigOne = new BigOne();

        String classic = "classic.out";
        String gzip = "gzip.out";

        // Saves the same object twice on the disk
        Serializer.save(Type.CLASSIC, bigOne, classic);
        Serializer.save(Type.GZIP, bigOne, gzip);

        // Loads the objects from the disk
        BigOne bigOne1 = Serializer.load(Type.GZIP, BigOne.class, gzip);
        BigOne bigOne2 = Serializer.load(Type.CLASSIC, BigOne.class, classic);

        // Compares for equality all the 3 objects
        System.out.println("bigOne .eq bigOne1 ->" + bigOne1.equals(bigOne));
        System.out.println("bigOne .eq bigOne2 ->" + bigOne2.equals(bigOne));
    }
}

The Serializer class has two methods (save(...) and load(...)), that can serialize/deserialize objects with or without the additional “gzip” layer.

Depending on the input, the ZIP algorithm can drastically reduce the de size of the input. So it’s expected the file gzip.out to be smaller (size) than “classic.out”.

The code is available on github. To clone it:

gh repo clone nomemory/blog-gzip-stream-serialization