Prevent component tree serialization for certain parts of application - jsf

Question

Is it possible to explicitly deny JSF from serializing some component trees? At the moment I am passing a non-serializable object to a <h:inputText>:
<h:inputText value="#{nonSerializableBean.nonSerializableClassInstance}" />
What happens after a few clicks is that I get (during view restoration):
javax.faces.FacesException: Unexpected error restoring state for component
with id configurationForm:j_idt292:j_idt302:field. Cause:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: java.lang.InstantiationException:
my.namespace.NonSerializableClass
I think this occurs because JSF cannot restore the nonSerializableClassInstance:
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: java.lang.InstantiationException: com.foobar.utils.text.Period
at javax.faces.component.StateHolderSaver.restore(StateHolderSaver.java:110)
at javax.faces.component.ComponentStateHelper.restoreState(ComponentStateHelper.java:292)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.restoreState(UIComponentBase.java:1444)
at javax.faces.component.UIOutput.restoreState(UIOutput.java:255)
at javax.faces.component.UIInput.restoreState(UIInput.java:1359)
A bonus question: Is it ok not to make backing beans Serializable? Should this then prevent serialization/deserialization of these?
Some background:
We have a bunch of 3rd party classes that we need to provide forms for in JSF. The problem is that we cannot directly use these classes on JSF pages, because they do not implement Serializable interface, and thus will/should fail if JSF runtime decides to serialize/deserialize the page and the component-tree. The classes are "closed" and we are not allowed to modify them.
Running Mojarra 2.0.2.

Answer 1

Javabeans are by spec supposed to implement Serializable. JSF just follows/adheres this spec.
The classes are "closed" and we are not allowed to modify them.
Your best bet is to wrap it as a transient property of a class which implements Serializable and implement the writeObject() and readObject() accordingly.
public class SerializableClass implements Serializable {
private transient NonSerializableClass nonSerializableClass;
public SerializableClass(NonSerializableClass nonSerializableClass) {
this.nonSerializableClass = nonSerializableClass;
}
public NonSerializableClass getNonSerializableClass() {
return nonSerializableClass;
}
private void writeObject(ObjectOutputStream oos) throws IOException {
oos.defaultWriteObject();
oos.writeObject(nonSerializableClass.getProperty1());
oos.writeObject(nonSerializableClass.getProperty2());
// ...
}
private void readObject(ObjectInputStream ois) throws ClassNotFoundException, IOException {
ois.defaultReadObject();
nonSerializableClass = new NonSerializableClass();
nonSerializableClass.setProperty1((String) ois.readObject());
nonSerializableClass.setProperty2((String) ois.readObject());
// ...
}
}
Finally use that class instead. You could eventually let it extends NonSerializableClass and then autogenerate delegate methods by a bit decent IDE.
Either way, it's only going to be a lot of opaque and boilerplate code, but since you're not allowed to modify those classes... (I would personally just push that 3rd party stuff to have them their so-called Javabeans to implement Serializable since it are them who's breaking the standards/specs).

Answer 2

I don't know what you expect if the class members (e.g. nonSerializableClassInstance) are not getting serialized.
Of course, you can mark them as transient.
The aim of a managed bean is to hold the application state - you will lose the state if some members are not getting serialized (if the server has the need of doing this).