Understanding Kotlin data serialization

Data serialization is a crucial process in programming that transforms data into different formats to enable sharing and compatibility across various systems and applications. This tutorial focuses on the use of Kotlin, a language developed by Google for Android development, to perform data serialization using the kotlinx.serialization library. This library, released in its first stable version in 2020, is designed for Kotlin Multiplatform and supports multiple data formats, making it versatile for serializing data classes, singletons, and generic lists. It facilitates content negotiation in frameworks like Ktor and supports integration with Spring MVC and Http4k. Serialization offers benefits such as data portability and accessibility, but it also presents challenges like time consumption and the risk of exposing sensitive data. The process can be reversed through deserialization, allowing data to be converted back into its original format. The tutorial provides practical guidance on implementing serialization in Kotlin, highlighting both its advantages and disadvantages.