Chapter 5. Serialization.

1. How to serialize an object.

In order to be able to serialize type it needs to be marked with [Serialized] attribute.

[Serializable]
class ObjectToBeSerialized
{
}

 

We can serialize such object like this:

  1: using System;

  2: using System.IO;

  3: using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

  4:

  5: [Serializable]

  6: class ObjectToBeSerialized

  7: {

  8: }

  9:

 10: class Program

 11: {

 12:     void Serialize()

 13:     {

 14:         ObjectToBeSerialized instance = new ObjectToBeSerialized();

 15:

 16:         using (FileStream stream = File.Create( @"c:/output.bin"))

 17:         {

 18:             BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

 19:             formatter.Serialize(stream, instance);

 20:         }

 21:     }

 22: }

2. How to deserialize object.

  1:

  2: using (FileStream stream = File.Open(@"c:/output.bin", FileMode.Open))

  3: {

  4:     BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();

  5:     ObjectToBeSerialized instance = (ObjectToBeSerialized )formatter.Deserialize(stream);

  6: }

  7: 

3. How to handle values that are calculated / do not have to be serialized.

  1: using System.Runtime.Serialization;

  2: using System;

  3:

  4: [Serializable]

  5: class ObjectToBeSerialized : IDeserializationCallback

  6: {

  7:     private int m_value1;

  8:

  9:     [NonSerialized]

 10:     private int m_value2;

 11:

 12:     public ObjectToBeSerialized( int _value1)

 13:     {

 14:         m_value1 = _value1;

 15:         m_value2 = 10; // calculated value

 16:     }

 17:

 18:     public void OnDeserialization(object sender)

 19:     {

 20:         m_value2 = 10;

 21:     }

 22: }

 23: 

If we don’t want some fields to be serialized we mark them with [NonSerialized].

If we have some values that are not serialized but have to be initialized we can use IDeserializationCallback interface to handle that.

4. Serialization and version compatibility.

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