Serializing methods is not permitted? impossible?

Question

The Method class is final and does not implement Serializable . Thus, symantically it is impossible to serialize a method object, right? Is serializing methods possible but not permitted, or is it just plain impossible? Why? I have not looked at RMI, at all. Before that though I would like to understand the method object serialization issue. thanks.

Answer 1

I hope this clarifies what I wanted to do:
server
ServerSocket servSok = new ServerSocket(8976);
ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(servSok.accept().getInputStream());
Object obj = (Object) ois.readObject();
Method m = String.class.getMethod("toUpperCase", null); // "m" is gotten locally.
// Method m = (Method) ois.readObject(); // I wanted this.
// at this point, the interface/class of "obj" is unknown, yet, I can still invoke a String method on it.
String uc = (String) m.invoke(obj, null);
System.out.println(uc); // correct output
client
Socket sok = new Socket("192.168.3.2", 8976);
ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(sok.getOutputStream());
String s = new String("whatever");
Method m = String.class.getMethod("toUpperCase", null);
oos.writeObject(s);
oos.writeObject(m);  // java.io.NotSerializableException
.....I thought it would be neat to be able to send an object to a server, and then without the server knowing anything about that object's interface, I could remotely execute methods on the object. As a client, it would be my responsibility to only send the server methods that fitted to the interface of the object I sent. I had a lot more work to do to get fully functional test code. However, everything came a hault because I can't serialize the Method objects.
Edited by: outekko on Feb 21, 2010 11:34 PM