Java SE (Java Platform, Standard Edition)

Hi,

I was browsing the API�s this morning and I cam across the XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder. To my surprise I found out that the example used for the XMLEncoder class was serializing (is this the good word to use?) a JButton!

I was amazed because to my knowledge (which was wrong) GUI (Swing) elements could not be normally serialized (Binary Serialization). I created a quick example of this as follows:

 // imports.
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.beans.XMLDecoder;
import java.beans.XMLEncoder;
import java.io.BufferedOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Vector;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;

// class.
public class SaveLoadView {

    public SaveLoadView() throws Exception{
        
        // frame1.
        JFrame frame1 = new JFrame();
        frame1.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        
        // label.
        JLabel label = new JLabel("Hello1");
        label.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 30));
        frame1.add(label, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        
        // button.
        JButton button = new JButton("Hello2");
        button.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 30));
        button.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
                System.out.println("Hello2");
            }
        });
        frame1.add(button, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        
        // frame1 properties.
        frame1.setTitle("Save/Load View");
        frame1.setSize(200,100);
        frame1.pack();
        frame1.setVisible(true);
        
        // save frame1.
        this.save("C:\\frame.xml", frame1);
        
        // load frame1 (as frame2).
        JFrame frame2 = (JFrame)this.load("C:\\frame.xml");
        frame2.setVisible(true);
    }
    
    // load.
    public JFrame load(String file) throws IOException{
        
        XMLDecoder decoder = null;
        JFrame frame = null;

        try{
            decoder = new XMLDecoder(new FileInputStream(file));
            Object o = decoder.readObject();
            frame = (JFrame)o;
        }finally{
            decoder.close();
        }

        return frame;
    }

    // save.
    public void save(String file, JFrame frame) throws IOException {
        XMLEncoder encoder = null;

        try{
            encoder = new XMLEncoder(new FileOutputStream(file));
            encoder.writeObject(frame);
        }
        catch(Exception e){
            System.out.println(e.toString());
           }
        finally{
            encoder.close();
        }
    }

    // main.
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        
        new SaveLoadView();
    } 
}

This code worked fine and created me the following XML

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<java version="1.5.0_02" class="java.beans.XMLDecoder"> 
 <object class="javax.swing.JFrame"> 
  <void property="size"> 
   <object class="java.awt.Dimension"> 
    <int>208</int> 
    <int>87</int> 
   </object> 
  </void> 
  <void property="contentPane"> 
   <void method="add"> 
    <object id="JLabel0" class="javax.swing.JLabel"> 
     <void property="text"> 
      <string>Hello1</string> 
     </void> 
    </object> 
   </void> 
   <void method="add"> 
    <object id="JButton0" class="javax.swing.JButton"> 
     <string>Hello2</string> 
    </object> 
   </void> 
   <void property="layout"> 
    <object class="java.awt.BorderLayout"> 
     <void method="addLayoutComponent"> 
      <object idref="JButton0"/> 
      <string>South</string> 
     </void> 
     <void method="addLayoutComponent"> 
      <object idref="JLabel0"/> 
      <string>Center</string> 
     </void> 
    </object> 
   </void> 
  </void> 
  <void property="name"> 
   <string>frame0</string> 
  </void> 
  <void property="title"> 
   <string>Save/Load View</string> 
  </void> 
  <void property="visible"> 
   <boolean>true</boolean> 
  </void> 
 </object> 
</java>

However I realized that it did not encode the event as well! I can load the Jframe and show it, but the button will not have any action!

I was wondering; Is there something or some code that also encode the events of a class and also the methods??

Regards,
Sim085