Serialization: New player has joined

We've previously seen how some libraries may not support kotlin completely, but this is obviously not the case with kotlinx.serialization as it is written in Kotlin and supported for all Kotlin multiplatform targets.

kotlinx.serialization provides a framework for converting an object into a sequence of bits and bytes, and of course a way of converting it back into an object. It ships with support for Json, Protobuf, CBOR, Properties and HOCON, albeit all except Json are at this point considered experimental.

To achieve this level of flexibility the process is split into two distinct phases; serialization and encoding. The serialization phase is shared between all data formats, and is responsible for converting a object into a serial sequence of primitives. The sequence of primitives is then passed on to encoding, where the data format specifics are responsible for converting those primitives into their correct output format.

The process of serialization and deserialization are encapsulated within the KSerializer<T> interface, whereas encoding and decoding have their own aptly named interfaces; Encoder and Decoder.

To get started using kotlinx.serialization you will have to make some changes to your build configuration. First you'll need to add the compiler plugin used to generate the serializers for your classes. This is needed as kotlinx.serialization does not rely on reflection, and as such needs to generate code at compile-time to know how a class should be serialized. Lastly, you'll need to add a dependency to the data format encoder, which in this example just so happens to be JSON.

At this point you may try to convert an object into JSON, but unfortunately this will lead to an exception that spoils all your Christmas jolly;

As briefly mentioned earlier this framework does not rely on reflection, and therefore needs to generate some code during compilation in order to work. But, how could the compiler ever know which classes it should support? Creating KSerializers for every class seen in the classpath would make the compile time excruciatingly slow (the hint is in the exception). The @Serializable interface serves as the entrypoint to the serialization process, and instructs the serialization plugin to automatically generate the appropriate KSerializer for the annotated class.

At this point you are ready to convert your object to Json (or Protobuf if you want);

And of course you'll be able to convert the output back into an object;

One caveat to bear in mind is however to what degree your codebase uses java classes, whether they are defined in your codebase or provided by the java runtime environment. This relates to the fact that the framework depends on having access to KSerializer's in order to work, which classes defined in or by java does not provide. And as such if you try to convert a java.util.UUID you'll see a similar exception to the one we got before adding @Serializable to MyFavoriteObject.

To remedy this you must create and register you own serializer;

We've reused the String.serializer() to implement our serializer, we registered the serializer, and then successfully converted a UUID to JSON. Since we were able to reuse String.serializer() the implementation became rather simple, but more complex data structures will undoubtedly require more complex serializers.

So, should you start porting all your apps to kotlinx.serialization? Possibly, if your app is entirely written in Kotlin it will probably work almost right out of the box, and potentially even fix some issues. However, if your app is heavily dependent on java classes it may be better to just stick with what you've got or switch to a library which do more of the heavy lifting for you.