DeepCopy.java

/**
 SpagoBI, the Open Source Business Intelligence suite

 Copyright (C) 2012 Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. - SpagoBI Competency Center
 This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
 License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file,
 You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
 
**/
package it.eng.spagobi.studio.geo.util;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.ObjectOutputStream;
import java.io.ObjectInputStream;

/**
 * Utility for making deep copies (vs. clone()'s shallow copies) of
 * objects. Objects are first serialized and then deserialized. Error
 * checking is fairly minimal in this implementation. If an object is
 * encountered that cannot be serialized (or that references an object
 * that cannot be serialized) an error is printed to System.err and
 * null is returned. Depending on your specific application, it might
 * make more sense to have copy(...) re-throw the exception.
 *
 * A later version of this class includes some minor optimizations.
 */
public class DeepCopy {
	    /**
	     * Returns a copy of the object, or null if the object cannot
	     * be serialized.
	     */
	    public static Object copy(Object orig) {
	        Object obj = null;
	        try {
	            // Write the object out to a byte array
	            ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
	            ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(bos);
	            out.writeObject(orig);
	            out.flush();
	            out.close();

	            // Make an input stream from the byte array and read
	            // a copy of the object back in.
	            ObjectInputStream in = new ObjectInputStream(
	                new ByteArrayInputStream(bos.toByteArray()));
	            obj = in.readObject();
	        }
	        catch(IOException e) {
	            e.printStackTrace();
	        }
	        catch(ClassNotFoundException cnfe) {
	            cnfe.printStackTrace();
	        }
	        return obj;
	    }

	}