Why Arraylist<String> get stored in H2 database as a long and random string?

Question

I created an entity (Model or Data class) in a Spring-Boot (Kotlin) project which contains a field with the type Arraylist but when I send an array data in JSON format from Postman, the Array gets stored in the database as a long random string.

When I try to retrieve the data from the database I get the actual array, perfectly formated.

My question is why is an ArrayList stored in an H2 database like this???

Evaluation.kt

@Entity
data class Evaluation (
 @Id val id : String,
 val timeStamp : Long,
 val symptoms : ArrayList<String>,
 val travelHistory : Boolean,
 val contactWithCovidPatient : Boolean,
 val evaluatedBy : String,
 var evaluationPercentage : String? = null,
 @ManyToOne var user: User? = null
)

EvaluationController.kt

@RestController
class EvaluationController (val evaluationService: IEvaluationService) {

@PostMapping("evaluate/{userId}")
fun evaluateUser(@PathVariable userId : String, @RequestBody evaluation: Evaluation) : ResponseEntity<Evaluation> =
    ResponseEntity.ok().body(evaluationService.addEvaluation(evaluation, userId))

}

Request Body JSON

{
"id":"e_01",
"timeStamp":"123456789",
"pinCode":"123457",
"travelHistory":true,
"contactWithCovidPatient":true,
"evaluatedBy":"u_01",
"symptoms": ["Fever","Cough"]
}

Response JSON

{
"id": "e_01",
"timeStamp": 123456789,
"symptoms": [
    "Fever",
    "Cough"
],
"travelHistory": true,
"contactWithCovidPatient": true,
"evaluatedBy": "u_01",
"evaluationPercentage": "95",
"user": {
    "id": "u_01",
    "name": "abc01",
    "phoneNumber": "9876543210",
    "pinCode": "123457",
    "covidResult": "Positive"
}
}

H2 Database Table

Answer 1

This is a hex string representing the serialized ArrayList object. See Serializable Objects for details about object serialization in Java.

Running the following code yields the same result:

List<String> symptoms = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("Fever", "Cough"));
ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
ObjectOutputStream objectOutputStream = new ObjectOutputStream(byteArrayOutputStream);
objectOutputStream.writeObject(symptoms);
byte[] serializedObject = byteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray();
String hex = Hex.encodeHexString(serializedObject); // Apache Commons Codec
System.out.println(hex);

aced0005737200136a6176612e7574696c2e41727261794c6973747881d21d99c7619d03000149000473697a657870000000027704000000027400054665766572740005436f75676878