Know the amount of objects Serializable from file

Question

I am reading objects from a file using Serializable:

    public ArrayList<Object> deserialzePerson(String filename) {

    Object obj = null;

    ObjectInputStream ois;

    try {

        ois = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(filename));

        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {

            obj = (Object) ois.readObject();

            ObjectArray.add(obj);

        }

    } catch (Exception e) {

    }

    return ObjectArray;

}

However, I do not know the amount of objects in the file and use the number "100" in the for-loop. If there are less than 100, the exception will kick in and everything goes as expected. Nevertheless, I find this solution poor because it depends on catching errors. Is there a way to set the limit of the for-loop for the amount of objects in the file?

For instance, when reading from a .txt file I used

.hasNext();

is there something like this for objects?

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Answer 1

public void serializePerson(String filename, List<Person> persons) {
    try (FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(filename);
         ObjectOutputStream ous = new ObjectOutputStream(fos)) {

        ous.writeInt(persons.size());
        for (Person person : persons) {
            ous.writeObject(person);
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
    }
}

public List<Person> deserializePerson(String filename) {
    List<Person> result = new ArrayList<>();
    try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(filename);
         ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(fis)) {
        int size = ois.readInt();
        for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
            Person person = (Person) ois.readObject();
            result.add(person);
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
    }
    return result;
}

Know the amount of objects Serializable from file

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