CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaserialization
Sebastien Diot
Sebastien Diot

Reputation: 7359

Is it possible to find the "referring/parent object(s)" when serializing?

We are using an OODBMS, which allows both Java "entities" and serialized objects too. The DB supports true graphs (no "tree" restriction) and serialized objects can safely reference entities as well. The DB works (almost) transparently, and we can do whatever we want, and it-just-works.

Now, I've discovered that objects that had been marked as "logically deleted" (using a simple boolean flag, rather then built-in DB functionality, since the DB doesn't have such a concept) are loaded/saved within a particular object graph.

I want to know which object(s) references those "zombie" objects. Trying to use reflection to iterate over the graph has not worked so far. Instead of the DB, I can simply use Java serialization to export the object graph, and this also causes the "zombie" objects to be serialized.

My question is: can I somehow extract the information about the object(s) that is holding a reference to a "zombie" object during the serialisation process (the "parent" object)? There can be more then one, but as long as I have one, I can work iteratively until I killed off all those invalid references.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 40

Answers (1)

Aaron Digulla
Aaron Digulla

Reputation: 328724

Most OODBMS allow to run queries which return object references that satisfy certain constraints. So you could write something like this:

return all objects
where deleted == true
and Foo.bar == this

where Foo is the type of the object which references the deleted objects and bar is the field/property that contains the reference.

The exact syntax depends on your OODBMS.

Upvotes: 1

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