What should you do if you need to serialize an object of your class but one of its fields is not serializable?

Annotated with @Transient or the keyword transient.

public class MyObject implements Serializable {
    private int id;
    private String name;
    private transient NonSerializableField nonSerializableField; // Field that should not be serialized
    // or
    // @Transient // If using another serialization library
    // private NonSerializableField nonSerializableField;

    // Getters and setters
    // ...
}

When using @Transient or transient during serialization, the nonSerializableField will be ignored and not saved in the data stream. During deserialization, this field will have the default value (null for objects).