Object file handling giving java.io.StreamCorruptedException

Question

Hi All,
I am storing and retriving objects from a file. but when i write multiple objects then while reading objects from the file its giving
java.io.StreamCorruptedExceptionPlease advice. Here's the code
import java.io.*;
class Person implements Serializable{
     String name = null;
     int age = 0;
     public void setName(String name){
          this.name = name;
     public String getName(){
          return this.name;
     public void setAge(int age){
          this.age = age;
     public int getAge(){
          return this.age;
public class ObjectFileRead{
     public static void main(String args[]){
     try{     
     *     Writing the objects to the file
          FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("Person.dat",true);
          ObjectOutputStream objOutStream = new ObjectOutputStream (out);
          for(int i=0;i<5;i++){
               Person p = new Person();
               p.setName("MyName:1"+i);
               p.setAge(10+i);
               //System.out.println(p.getName());
               //System.out.println(p.getAge());
               objOutStream.writeObject (p);
          objOutStream.flush();
          objOutStream.close();
     *     Reading the objects fromt the file;
          FileInputStream inStream = new FileInputStream ("Person.dat");
          ObjectInputStream objInStream = new ObjectInputStream (inStream);
          try{
               while(true){
                    Person p = (Person)objInStream.readObject();
                    System.out.println(p.getName());
                    System.out.println(p.getAge());
          }catch(EOFException e){
     }catch(Exception e){
          System.out.println(e);
}

Answer 1

The output of ObjectOutputStream starts with a header. Because you append to the file Person.dat you end up with multiple headers, but you only open one ObjectInputStream. One approach would be to create a new ObjectInputStream wrapping inStream after every 5 objects read. I suspect a better one (because it avoids the risk of ObjectInputStream doing read-ahead and buffering) is to replace the appending with reading the file and writing it out again followed by the new objects.