What does it mean: The serializable class does not declare a static final serialVersionUID field?

Roman picture Roman · Feb 18, 2010 · Viewed 225k times · Source

I have the warning message given in the title. I would like to understand and remove it. I found already some answers on this question but I do not understand these answers because of an overload with technical terms. Is it possible to explain this issue with simple words?

P.S. I know what OOP is. I know what is object, class, method, field and instantiation.

P.P.S. If somebody needs my code it is here:

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;


public class HelloWorldSwing extends JFrame {

        JTextArea m_resultArea = new JTextArea(6, 30);

        //====================================================== constructor
        public HelloWorldSwing() {
            //... Set initial text, scrolling, and border.
            m_resultArea.setText("Enter more text to see scrollbars");
            JScrollPane scrollingArea = new JScrollPane(m_resultArea);
            scrollingArea.setBorder(BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder(10,5,10,5));

            // Get the content pane, set layout, add to center
            Container content = this.getContentPane();
            content.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
            content.add(scrollingArea, BorderLayout.CENTER);
            this.pack();
        }

        public static void createAndViewJFrame() {
            JFrame win = new HelloWorldSwing();
            win.setTitle("TextAreaDemo");
            win.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
            win.setVisible(true);
        }

        //============================================================= main
        public static void main(String[] args) {
            SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
                public void run(){
                    createAndViewJFrame();
                }
            });
        }

}

Answer

Bozho picture Bozho · Feb 18, 2010

From the javadoc:

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 different serialVersionUID than that of the corresponding sender's class, then deserialization will result in an InvalidClassException. A serializable class can declare its own serialVersionUID explicitly by declaring a field named "serialVersionUID" that must be static, final, and of type long:

You can configure your IDE to:

  • ignore this, instead of giving a warning.
  • autogenerate an id

As per your additional question "Can it be that the discussed warning message is a reason why my GUI application freeze?":

No, it can't be. It can cause a problem only if you are serializing objects and deserializing them in a different place (or time) where (when) the class has changed, and it will not result in freezing, but in InvalidClassException.