How can I store an arraylist of custom objects?
I use a class in a Weather app I'm developing...
public class RegionList extends ArrayList<Region> {} // Region implements Serializeable
To save I use code like this...
FileOutputStream outStream = new FileOutputStream(Weather.WeatherDir + "/RegionList.dat");
ObjectOutputStream objectOutStream = new ObjectOutputStream(outStream);
objectOutStream.writeInt(uk_weather_regions.size()); // Save size first
for(Region r:uk_weather_regions)
objectOutStream.writeObject(r);
objectOutStream.close();
NOTE: Before I write the Region objects, I write an int to save the 'size' of the list.
When I read back I do this...
FileInputStream inStream = new FileInputStream(f);
ObjectInputStream objectInStream = new ObjectInputStream(inStream);
int count = objectInStream.readInt(); // Get the number of regions
RegionList rl = new RegionList();
for (int c=0; c < count; c++)
rl.add((Region) objectInStream.readObject());
objectInStream.close();
You're in luck, all of your class' members are already serialzble so your first step is to say that Lecture is Serializable.
public class Lecture implements Serializable {
public String title;
public String startTime;
public String endTime;
public String day;
public boolean classEnabled;
public Lecture(String title, String startTime, String endTime, String day, boolean enable){
this.title = title;
this.startTime = startTime;
this.endTime = endTime;
this.day = day;
this.classEnabled = enable;
}
Next, you need to make a default constructor since serialization seems to require that. The last thing is you need to write your object out to a file. I usually use something like the following. Note this is for saving a game state so you might not want to use the cache directory.
private void saveState() {
final File cache_dir = this.getCacheDir();
final File suspend_f = new File(cache_dir.getAbsoluteFile() + File.separator + SUSPEND_FILE);
FileOutputStream fos = null;
ObjectOutputStream oos = null;
boolean keep = true;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(suspend_f);
oos = new ObjectOutputStream(fos);
oos.writeObject(this.gameState);
}
catch (Exception e) {
keep = false;
Log.e("MyAppName", "failed to suspend", e);
}
finally {
try {
if (oos != null) oos.close();
if (fos != null) fos.close();
if (keep == false) suspend_f.delete();
}
catch (Exception e) { /* do nothing */ }
}
}
Reading the data back is pretty symmetric to the write so I have left that out for this answer. Also, there are still a lot of caveats to Serialized objects so I suggest you do some Google searches and read up on Java serialization in general.