diff --git a/lib/java/src/TDeserializer.java b/lib/java/src/TDeserializer.java
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/lib/java/src/TDeserializer.java
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+// Copyright (c) 2006- Facebook
+// Distributed under the Thrift Software License
+//
+// See accompanying file LICENSE or visit the Thrift site at:
+// http://developers.facebook.com/thrift/
+
+package com.facebook.thrift;
+
+import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
+import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
+
+import com.facebook.thrift.protocol.TBinaryProtocol;
+import com.facebook.thrift.protocol.TProtocol;
+import com.facebook.thrift.protocol.TProtocolFactory;
+import com.facebook.thrift.transport.TIOStreamTransport;
+import com.facebook.thrift.transport.TTransport;
+
+/**
+ * Generic utility for easily deserializing objects from a byte array or Java
+ * String.
+ *
+ * @author David Reiss <dreiss@facebook.com>
+ */
+public class TDeserializer {
+  private final TProtocolFactory protocolFactory_;
+
+  /**
+   * Create a new TDeserializer that uses the TBinaryProtocol by default.
+   */
+  public TDeserializer() {
+    this(new TBinaryProtocol.Factory());
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Create a new TDeserializer. It will use the TProtocol specified by the
+   * factory that is passed in.
+   *
+   * @param protocolFactory Factory to create a protocol
+   */
+  public TDeserializer(TProtocolFactory protocolFactory) {
+    protocolFactory_ = protocolFactory;
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Deserialize the Thrift object from a byte array.
+   *
+   * @param base The object to read into
+   * @param bytes The array to read from
+   */
+  public void deserialize(TBase base, byte[] bytes) throws TException {
+    base.read(
+        protocolFactory_.getProtocol(
+          new TIOStreamTransport(
+            new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes))));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Deserialize the Thrift object from a Java string, using a specified
+   * character set for decoding.
+   *
+   * @param base The object to read into
+   * @param data The string to read from
+   * @param charset Valid JVM charset
+   */
+  public void deserialize(TBase base, String data, String charset) throws TException {
+    try {
+      deserialize(base, data.getBytes(charset));
+    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException uex) {
+      throw new TException("JVM DOES NOT SUPPORT ENCODING: " + charset);
+    }
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Deerialize the Thrift object from a Java string, using the default JVM
+   * charset encoding.
+   *
+   * @param base The object to read into
+   * @param data The string to read from
+   * @return Serialized object as a String
+   */
+  public void toString(TBase base, String data) throws TException {
+    deserialize(base, data.getBytes());
+  }
+}
+