InvalidClassException ImageIcon.$AccessibleImageIcon class incompatible

Question

Greetings,
I cannot seem to find a solution for this problem, so I am turning to you - your help is greatly appreciated.
Below is a snippet of some legacy code that has been deployed in an app running JRE 1.4.2.
class NodeImage implements Serializable {
    final static long serialVersionUID = 2606889903904458364L;
    public Dimension dim;
    public transient Image img;
    public ImageIcon ii; //VERY PROBLEMATIC NOW!!!!
    public String name;
    public String description;
  }Now, with the application having been modified and upgraded to run on JRE 1.5.0, old serialized objects can no longer be read into the above class, because the ImageIcon.$AccessibleImageIcon serialVersionUID has changed. The exception being thrown is as follows:
java.io.InvalidClassException: javax.swing.ImageIcon$AccessibleImageIcon;
local class incompatible: stream classdesc serialVersionUID = -3994512798706967451,
local class serialVersionUID = -1903458698681874148
        at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.initNonProxy(ObjectStreamClass.java:519)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readNonProxyDesc(ObjectInputStream.java:1546)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readClassDesc(ObjectInputStream.java:1460)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1693)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1299)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:1912)
        at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadObject(ObjectInputStream.java:468)
        at javax.swing.ImageIcon.readObject(ImageIcon.java:389)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        ...The object has no explicit readObject or writeObject methods.
I have tried a variety of things - e.g. writing a new readObject method, and using java.io.ObjectInputStream.GetField fields = in.readFields(); but I cannot seem to find a way to read the offending field without the exception being thrown and the rest of the read process aborted.
Is there ANY way around this?
I don't care if the end result makes the ImageIcon ii field null. But because this is just one object in a serialized hierarchy, I just want to be able to get the dim, name, and description attributes and then continue loading the remainder of the object hierarchy.
Thanks in advance for your help! Any insight would be great.
.

Answer 1

Your developers should have read the warning in the javadoc for javax.swing.ImageIcon before serializing ImageIcons across JDK versions.
You may have to use JDK 1.4 to read these streams and write them out again using something other than classes with this warning when they occur.
The only other thing I can suggest is a custom readObject method which doesn't call defaultReadObject() and instead picks apart the serialization protocol itself for the offending class(es), calling readObject() for all non-offending members.