How to generate a serialVersionUID in IntelliJ IDEA
Ever since the appearance of Jackson, GSON, and others, Java serialization has lost popularity. Many of these libraries don't even require that your classes implement the Serializable interface. However, it's still a good idea to implement this interface in your Model classes. Frameworks such as Apache Wicket still require it.
Providing a serialVersionUID field is not strictly required, but is highly recommended to declare it when implementing the Serializable interface (Java Serialization). This field is used to enforce compatibility checks when deserializing a serialized object and verify that the object is compatible with the loaded class.
IntelliJ can generate this field for us whenever a class implements the Serializable interface.
How to generate the serialVersionUID field with an IntelliJ plugin?
IntelliJ's marketplace offers a few plugins that implement this feature. I'm using the GenerateSerialVersionUID, which was the only one available when I needed this feature a few years ago. However, there are plenty of alternatives now.
Once you've enabled this plugin, you just need to press Alt+Insert/Command+n when you are in the body of a class implementing the Serializable interface. You should see an option to generate the serialVersionUID field for you.
How to generate serialVersionUID with IntelliJ's built-in features?
If you don't want to install any plugin, IntelliJ has some built-in features that you can enable and use to generate the serialVersionUID field. There is a Serializable inspection that has a quick-fix intention that we can take advantage of.
The first step is to enable the inspection in the settings dialog. Open the Settings dialog (Ctrl+Alt+S/Command+,) and navigate to the Editor | Inspections tab.
With the inspection enabled, a warning is displayed whenever a Serializable class doesn't declare a serialVersionUID field. IntelliJ can now generate the field if you place the cursor on top of the warning. You can then press Alt+Enter and select the Add 'serialVersionUID' field option.
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