Serialization Question

[monrobot13]

Hi Everyone, Lets say I have a collection class (MyClassCollection) that holds instances of another class I've defined (MyClass). If I serialize the collection class (using a BinaryFormatter) and then deserialize it later will I get back the exact same information? For example if I had the following line:

MyClassCollection[0] = new MyClass ("Hello");

If I then serialize and deserialize the MyClassCollection will this work as expected (assuming Name is a member of MyClass that gets it's value from the constructor):

// Will str be equal to "Hello"?
string str = MyClassCollection[0].Name;

- monrobot13

[Kastro]

Serialization and deserialization of MyClassCollection (and the instances of MyClass that it holds) will work properly so long as you apply SerializableAttribute to both MyClassCollection and MyClass. If either class is not marked with SerializableAttribute you will receive a SerializationException when you try to call BinaryFormatter.Serialize. The following demonstrates the serialization of your classes:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

[Serializable()]
public class MyClass {

public MyClass(string name) {
	\_Name = name;
}

public string Name {
	get { return \_Name; }
}

private string \_Name;

}

[Serializable()]
class MyClassCollection {

public MyClassCollection() {
	\_Items = new MyClass\[4\];
}

public MyClass this\[int index\] {
	get { return \_Items\[index\]; }
	set { \_Items\[index\] = value; }
}

public override string ToString() {
	string result = "MyClassCollection {";
	for (int i = 0; i < \_Items.Length; i++)
		result += (i != 0 ? ", " : "") + (\_Items\[i\] != null ? \_Items\[i\].Name : "\[null\]");
	result += "}";
	return result;
}

private MyClass\[\] \_Items;

\[STAThread\]
static void Main(string\[\] args) {
	BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
	MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
	// Populate collection
	MyClassCollection col = new MyClassCollection();
	col\[0\] = new MyClass("Item #1");
	col\[2\] = new MyClass("Item #2");
	Console.WriteLine(col);
	// Serialize collection and reset stream to beginning
	formatter.Serialize(stream, col);
	col = null;
	stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
	// Deserialize collection
	col = (MyClassCollection)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
	stream.Close();
	Console.WriteLine(col);
	Console.Read();
}

}

Output:

MyClassCollection {Item #1, [null], Item #2, [null]}
MyClassCollection {Item #1, [null], Item #2, [null]}

Hope this helps.

[monrobot13]

Kastro wrote: Hope this helps That helps a lot. Thanks for the help. - monrobot13