Serializing System.Drawing.Color in .NET

Question

Hi all,

I've used the default .NET serialization for a class with a System.Drawing.Color member. The code is now in use by people, and I need to add an extra member to the class, but still deserialize older versions.

So I tried the standard way of doing this: The ISerializable interface, using SerializationInfo methods to get the int and string members.

The problem: My class also has a System.Drawing.Color member, but SerializationInfo doesn't provide a "GetColor" method read this data type. I've tried getting it as an int and as a string, and casting it to System.Drawing.Color, but no luck.

Does anyone know how to deserialize a System.Drawing.Color from SerializationInfo?

Thanx! Alan

Answer 1

Using ISerializable is not the recommended way to deal with versioning. The [OptionalField] is, the ins and outs are well described in this MSDN library article.

Answering your question: SerializationInfo.GetValue("fieldName", typeof(Color)) ought to give you the color. You'll need to cast the return value.

Answer 2

I have used something like this in the past.

 <Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnore()> Public BackColour As Drawing.Color

        Public Property xmlBackColour() As Integer
            Get
                Return BackColour.ToArgb
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value As Integer)
                BackColour = Drawing.Color.FromArgb(value)
            End Set
        End Property