Appending to an ObjectOutputStream

Question

Is it not possible to append to an ObjectOutputStream?

I am trying to append to a list of objects. Following snippet is a function that is called whenev

Answer 1

I have extended the accepted solution to create a class that can be used for both appending and creating new file.

import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;

public class AppendableObjectOutputStream extends ObjectOutputStream {

    private boolean append;
    private boolean initialized;
    private DataOutputStream dout;

    protected AppendableObjectOutputStream(boolean append) throws IOException, SecurityException {
        super();
        this.append = append;
        this.initialized = true;
    }

    public AppendableObjectOutputStream(OutputStream out, boolean append) throws IOException {
        super(out);
        this.append = append;
        this.initialized = true;
        this.dout = new DataOutputStream(out);
        this.writeStreamHeader();
    }

    @Override
    protected void writeStreamHeader() throws IOException {
        if (!this.initialized || this.append) return;
        if (dout != null) {
            dout.writeShort(STREAM_MAGIC);
            dout.writeShort(STREAM_VERSION);
        }
    }

}

This class can be used as a direct extended replacement for ObjectOutputStream. We can use the class as follows:

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

public class ObjectWriter {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        File file = new File("file.dat");
        boolean append = file.exists(); // if file exists then append, otherwise create new

        try (
            FileOutputStream fout = new FileOutputStream(file, append);
            AppendableObjectOutputStream oout = new AppendableObjectOutputStream(fout, append);
        ) {
            oout.writeObject(...); // replace "..." with serializable object to be written
        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

}