How do you make a deep copy of an object?

Question

It\'s a bit difficult to implement a deep object copy function. What steps you take to ensure the original object and the cloned one share no reference?

Answer 1

Here is an easy example on how to deep clone any object: Implement serializable first

public class CSVTable implements Serializable{
    Table table; 
    public CSVTable() {
        this.table = HashBasedTable.create();
    }
    
    public CSVTable deepClone() {
        try {
            ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos);
            oos.writeObject(this);

            ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray());
            ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(bais);
            return (CSVTable) ois.readObject();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            return null;
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
            return null;
        }
    }

}

And then

CSVTable table = new CSVTable();
CSVTable tempTable = table.deepClone();

is how you get the clone.