Deserialize java Object from Class function

Question

Lets imagine I have the following Java class:

public class ImaginaryClass implements Serializable {
    private List<SomeData> someData;
    private transient boolean isSynced;

    public ImaginaryClass() {
        this.load();
    }

    public void addSomeData(SomeData data) {
        this.someData.add(data);
        this.isSynced = false;
        this.save();
    }

    private void load() {
        // Deserialize "this" instance of the object
        this.isSynced = true;
    }

    private void save() {
        // Serialize "this" instance of the object
        this.isSynced = true;
    }
}

My goal is to encapsulate the serialization and deserialization of an objects instance within the objects own class. I have many classes to implement that require special "treatment" and therefore this is the easiest design I've come up with so far.

But, I'm running into problems, I can't reassign the reference this so I'm under the impression this is not going to work. In Java is my above example possible? How do I make this work?

Answer 1

You can't reassign this , what you do in a Serializable object is to serialize / de-serialize all non transient non static fields.

Your idea of creating a new instance of the object is not bad.

If you create a brand new object you should return it as a new reference, in this case you can either have a factory which builds the object by loading it from some persistent storage, like:

ImaginaryClass objImg = ImaginaryClassFactory.newInstace().loadImaginaryClass();

Or you can do that in a public static method in the class itself:

public class ImaginaryClass implements Serializable {
  public static ImaginaryClass load(){
     ....
  }
}