Object(Output|Input)Stream binary protocol

Question

I was wondering if anyone had some resources that describe the binary protocol used by ObjectOutputStream. I realize of course that objects themselves can specify what their data by implementing the Externalizable interface, so I guess I'm looking more toward the structure of the object graph - the metadata if you will.

I am writing a C program that has to talk to a legacy Java program. I have no way to change either of these requirements so find myself reverse engineering the ObjectOutputStream protocol. (There is a server that uses HTTP for transport and returns Object*Stream as the HTTP response.)

However, I feel like someone else out there has to have done this work before. Can you point to any resources to speed up my work?

Answer 1

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/serialization/index.html

and from there

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/platform/serialization/spec/protocol.html