How can I store an arraylist of custom objects?

Question

I have created an arraylist that is made up of custom objects. Basically the user will create a class and every time a class is created, a new Lecture (my custom object) is added to the arraylist. I need to save the generated arraylist so the user's classes will be saved even when the app is restarted.

From my understanding, I have to make my class serializable. But how exactly do I do that? And then once its serialized what do I do?

public class Lecture{

public String title;
public String startTime;
public String endTime;
public String day;
public boolean classEnabled;

public Lecture(String title, String startTime, String endTime, String day, boolean enable){
    this.title = title;
    this.startTime = startTime;
    this.endTime = endTime;
    this.day = day;
    this.classEnabled = enable;
}
//Getters and setters below

Answer 1

I use a class in a Weather app I'm developing...

public class RegionList extends ArrayList<Region> {} // Region implements Serializeable

To save I use code like this...

FileOutputStream outStream = new FileOutputStream(Weather.WeatherDir + "/RegionList.dat");
ObjectOutputStream objectOutStream = new ObjectOutputStream(outStream);
objectOutStream.writeInt(uk_weather_regions.size()); // Save size first
for(Region r:uk_weather_regions)
    objectOutStream.writeObject(r);
objectOutStream.close();

NOTE: Before I write the Region objects, I write an int to save the 'size' of the list.

When I read back I do this...

FileInputStream inStream = new FileInputStream(f);
ObjectInputStream objectInStream = new ObjectInputStream(inStream);
int count = objectInStream.readInt(); // Get the number of regions
RegionList rl = new RegionList();
for (int c=0; c < count; c++)
    rl.add((Region) objectInStream.readObject());
objectInStream.close();