Can classes such as Item or ItemDefinition please be made Serializable?

 

This would make it easier to save equipment/item choices locally, rather than going by names or IDs.

Could be done in either way:

 

- Item and classes alike implement Serializable directly

- The Identifiable interface extends Serializable, such that Item and other classes inherits it from here.

An already declared serialVersionUID would be nice as well

Use a properties file, it's much easier and serialization is unneeded.

Use a properties file, it's much easier and serialization is unneeded.

 

I usually do property files, but having tried both Serializing and using Property files, I prefer Serializing

 

EDIT: But seeing as how this won't be implemented, atleast not anytime soon, I reckon I'll have to use property files again :E. If it all must be converted to primitive types anyway, the purpose of serializing somewhat fades

 

EDIT2: I retract that previous edit.. Looking into Properties a bit more, its implementation seem simply retarded. It extends Hashtable<Object, Object> leaving full access to the put/get methods of Hashtable, while utilizing these for anything but String will break it since it only supports String. Using properties to store multiple kinds of data structures is a losing battle, having to convert even primitive types into Strings and back.. I'll be going with Serializing after all

Edited August 5, 201411 yr by FrostBug

serializing objects is not meant for storage (long-term). rather it's supposed to be used to send and receive objects through and from streams (like sending something to a server) because if you save an object to a file like that it can become corrupted easily. i would agree that using java.util.Properties is not ideal for most situations, so instead you could write an xml parser which would be the best route, or you could use java.util.prefs.Preferences which is a step up from Properties