Save and load jtree

Question

Hi,
I have a jtree which I would like to save and then load and display in a JPanel. Just for info, the nodes of the tree are instances of a user object i have created. Now I have looked into two ways of doing this:
1) Serialize the actual JTree object; write it to a file using objectoutputstream and then read it in using objectinputstream, OR
2) Serialize the tree model again using objectoutputstream then read the model back and create a new JTree initialising with the model i read in.
I made some progress using the second approach, but when I load the tree model back and create a new tree with that model it just displays as a blank root with blank children. (Although the tree structure is the same).
What am i doing wrong?
The code is:
public void saveTheTree() {
        TreeModel tm = tree1.getModel();
        try {
             ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("treeModel"));
             out.writeObject(tm);//the actual tree object
             out.flush();
             out.close();
        catch(IOException e){}
  public void openTheTree() {
       ObjectInputStream in = null;
         try {
             in = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream("treeModel"));
             TreeModel atm = (TreeModel) in.readObject();
             JTree loaded = new JTree(atm);
             abPanel3.removeAll();
             abPanel3.revalidate();
             abPanel3.add(loaded, BorderLayout.CENTER);
             abPanel3.revalidate();
         catch(Exception e) {
              e.printStackTrace();
  }abPanel3 is where the tree is displayed and tree1 is my tree.
Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

well the leaves are defaultmutabletreenodes instantiated with a user object which attaches a link and level to each one. According to the java documentation, defaultmutabletreenode is serializable, but do i need to serialize each node of the tree as well?
Has anyone managed to save and load a jtree before?
Thanks.