Android: Difference between Parcelable and Serializable?

Parcelable is sort of a standard in Android development. But not because of speed

Parcelable is recommended approach for data transfers. But if you use serializable correctly as shown in this repo, you will see that serializable is sometimes even faster then parcelable. Or at least timings are comparable.

Is Parcelable faster then Serializable?

No, if serialization is done right.

Usual Java serialization on an average Android device (if done right *) is about 3.6 times faster than Parcelable for writes and about 1.6 times faster for reads. Also it proves that Java Serialization (if done right) is fast storage mechanism that gives acceptable results even with relatively large object graphs of 11000 objects with 10 fields each.

* The sidenote is that usually everybody who blindly states that "Parcelable is mush faster" compares it to default automatic serialization, which uses much reflection inside. This is unfair comparison, because Parcelable uses manual (and very complicated) procedure of writing data to the stream. What is usually not mentioned is that standard Java Serializable according to the docs can also be done in a manual way, using writeObject() and readObject() methods. For more info see JavaDocs. This is how it should be done for the best performance.

So, if serializable is faster and easier to implement, why android has parcelable at all?

The reason is native code. Parcelable is created not just for interprocess communication. It also can be used for intercode communication. You can send and recieve objects from C++ native layer. That's it.

What should you choose? Both will work good. But I think that Parcelable is better choice since it is recommended by google and as you can see from this thread is much more appreciated.

you can use the serializable objects in the intents but at the time of making serialize a Parcelable object it can give a serious exception like NotSerializableException. Is it not recommended using serializable with Parcelable . So it is better to extends Parcelable with the object that you want to use with bundle and intents. As this Parcelable is android specific so it doesn't have any side effects. :)

I am late in answer, but posting with hope that it will help others.

In terms of Speed, Parcelable > Serializable. But, Custom Serializable is exception. It is almost in range of Parcelable or even more faster.

Reference : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/customized-serialization-and-deserialization-in-java/

Example :

Custom Class to be serialized

class MySerialized implements Serializable { 

    String deviceAddress = "MyAndroid-04"; 

    transient String token = "AABCDS"; // sensitive information which I do not want to serialize

    private void writeObject(ObjectOutputStream oos) throws Exception {
        oos.defaultWriteObject();
        oos.writeObject("111111" + token); // Encrypted token to be serialized
    }

    private void readObject(ObjectInputStream ois) throws Exception {
        ois.defaultReadObject(); 
        token = ((String) ois.readObject()).subString(6);  // Decrypting token
    }

}

1. Serializable

The interface is a marker (an interface without abstract methods), nothing needs to be redefined.

2. Parcelable

An interface that has abstract methods. When implementing it, you need to redefine all abstract methods, specifying which fields and in what order you need to write/read (Usually the studio itself can generate them).

Practically no one writes in Kotlin. There is a special annotation for this, thanks to which the implementation of this interface will be generated automatically. To use it, you need to add a special plugin.

• In build.gradle in the plugins section, add another plugin: id 'kotlin-parcelize'

• Synchronize the project

You don't have to worry about implementing methods, all you need is to implement the Parcelable interface and add the @Parcelize annotation.

Everything will be fine and work quickly!

Results

The implementation process is faster if you implement the Parcelable interface instead of Serializable.

Serializable

Serializable is a markable interface or we can call as an empty interface. It doesn’t have any pre-implemented methods. Serializable is going to convert an object to byte stream. So the user can pass the data between one activity to another activity. The main advantage of serializable is the creation and passing data is very easy but it is a slow process compare to parcelable.

Parcelable

Parcel able is faster than serializable. Parcel able is going to convert object to byte stream and pass the data between two activities. Writing parcel able code is little bit complex compare to serialization. It doesn’t create more temp objects while passing the data between two activities.

Parcelable converts an object to byte stream to pass the object between processes in Android.

Serialization converts POJO to a String (JSON String) and be used across platforms to transfer object info.