Student Manager App - Part 4: Serialization

A Java console application that manages student records with object serialization and deserialization. This is Part 4 of a multi-part Student Manager series, building on CSV I/O by adding the ability to serialize entire StudentManager objects to binary .ser files using ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream.

Overview

This project extends the Student Manager application with Java object serialization. Both the Student and StudentManager classes implement Serializable, enabling the full object graph to be persisted to disk as a binary file and reconstructed later. The project also demonstrates serialVersionUID for version control of serialized classes, try-with-resources for cleaner stream management, and Java 8 Streams for filtering.

Features

• Object Serialization -- Write the entire StudentManager object (including its student list) to a .ser binary file
• Object Deserialization -- Read a StudentManager object back from a .ser file
• CSV File I/O -- Read from and write to CSV files using buffered streams
• Try-With-Resources -- Cleaner resource management with automatic stream closing
• Input Validation -- Validates student ID (G00XXXXXX), name, and age with IllegalArgumentException
• Search & Filter -- Find students by name, age, combined criteria, or age range
• Java 8 Streams -- Filter student lists using the Stream API

Prerequisites

• Java JDK 11 or higher
• A Java IDE (Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, VS Code) or command-line access

Getting Started

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/danielcregg/student-manager-app-part4-Serialization.git
   cd student-manager-app-part4-Serialization

2. Open the project in your preferred Java IDE, or compile from the command line.

Usage

Compile and run from the command line:

javac -d bin src/ie/atu/studentmanagerpackage/*.java
java -cp bin ie.atu.studentmanagerpackage.Main

The application reads student data from resources/students.csv, performs CRUD operations, serializes the StudentManager object to resources/students.ser, and then deserializes it back.

Tech Stack

• Language: Java
• Serialization: java.io.Serializable, ObjectOutputStream, ObjectInputStream
• I/O: java.io (FileReader, FileWriter, BufferedReader, BufferedWriter)
• Data Structures: java.util.ArrayList, Java 8 Streams
• Dev Environment: VS Code Dev Containers

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.