Serialization on runtime and partial Serialization

Question

I have a below class as example

class Employee implements Serializable{
transient String x;
String y;

Date d= new Date("5/10/1984");

}

1)Can i serialize x at run time? 2)Can i serialize only month and day not year in Date?

Answer 1

1) Date internally consists of a long (ms since 1.1.1970 utc). Month and day then are computed from the long and the current time zone. You can serialize a date, it will basically transmit the embedded long. 2) You can't, however you simply might serialize the strings. Beware, if this is deserialized in another locale this might create unexpected behaviour.