Eclipse issues warnings when a serialVersionUID
is missing.
The serializable class Foo does not declare a static final serialVersionUID field of type long
What is serialVersionUID
and why is it important? Please show an example where missing serialVersionUID
will cause a problem.
The docs for java.io.Serializable
are probably about as good an explanation as you'll get:
The serialization runtime associates with each serializable class a version number, called a
serialVersionUID
, which is used during deserialization to verify that the sender and receiver of a serialized object have loaded classes for that object that are compatible with respect to serialization. If the receiver has loaded a class for the object that has a differentserialVersionUID
than that of the corresponding sender's class, then deserialization will result in anInvalidClassException
. A serializable class can declare its ownserialVersionUID
explicitly by declaring a field namedserialVersionUID
that must be static, final, and of typelong
:
ANY-ACCESS-MODIFIER static final long serialVersionUID = 42L;
If a serializable class does not explicitly declare a
serialVersionUID
, then the serialization runtime will calculate a defaultserialVersionUID
value for that class based on various aspects of the class, as described in the Java(TM) Object Serialization Specification. However, it is strongly recommended that all serializable classes explicitly declareserialVersionUID
values, since the defaultserialVersionUID
computation is highly sensitive to class details that may vary depending on compiler implementations, and can thus result in unexpectedInvalidClassExceptions
during deserialization. Therefore, to guarantee a consistentserialVersionUID
value across different java compiler implementations, a serializable class must declare an explicitserialVersionUID
value. It is also strongly advised that explicitserialVersionUID
declarations use the private modifier where possible, since such declarations apply only to the immediately declaring class —serialVersionUID
fields are not useful as inherited members.