In Protobuf-net how can I pass an array of type object with objects of different types inside, knowing the set of potential types in advance.

Question

I am trying to migrate existing code that uses XmlSerializer to protobuf-net due to the increased performance it offers, however I am having problems with this specific case.

I have an object[] that includes parameters that are going to be sent to a remote host (sort of a custom mini rpc facility). I know the set of types from which these parameters can be, but I cannot tell in advance in which order they are going to be sent. I have three constraints. The first is that I am running in Compact Framework, so I need something that works there. Second, as I mentioned performance is a big concern (on the serializing side) so I would rather avoid using a lot of reflection there if possible. And the most important is that I care about the order in which this parameters were sent. Using XmlSerializer it was easy just adding XmlInclude, but for fields there is nothing equivalent as far as I know in Protobuf-net. So, is there a way to do this? Here is a simplified example.

    [Serializable]
    [XmlInclude(typeof(MyType1)),
     XmlInclude(typeof(MyType2)),
     XmlInclude(typeof(MyType3))
    public class Message()
    {
         public object[] parameters;

         public Message(object[] parms)
         {
             parameters = parms; 
         }
    }

    Message m = new Message(new object[] {MyType1(), 33, "test", 
                new MyType3(), new MyType3()});
    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
    XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Message));
    xml.Serialize(ms,xml);

That will just work with XmlSerializer, but if I try to convert it to protobuf-net I will get a "No default encoding for Object" message.

The best I came up with is to use generics and [ProtoInclude] as seen in this example. Since I can have different object types within the array this doesn't quite make it. I added a generic List for each potential type and a property with [ProtoIgnore] with type object[] to add them and get them. I have to use reflection when adding them (to know in which array to put each item) which is not desirable and I still can't preserve the ordering as I just extract all the items on each list one by one and put them into a new object[] array on the property get.

I wonder if there is a way to accomplish this?

---

I tried what Marc suggested below, but I couldn't get it to work. I think I may have misunderstood something.

Using the code you wrote. I thought I should use MessageParam Create to generate MessageParam objects to add to the list. So basically I added a constructor to Message like this:

public Message(object[] parms)
{
    foreach (object o in parms)
    {
        parameters.Add(MessageParam.Create(o));
    }
}

But, if i do that I will get "Unexpected type found during serialization; types must be included with ProtoIncludeAttribute; found MessageParam`1 passed as MessageParam" because I assume the serializer is expecting the non-generic version. Did I misunderstand your suggestion? If so, what is the right thing to do?

Answer 1

object is going to be problematic. I would try something more like:

[ProtoContract]
class Message
{
    private readonly List<MessageParam> parameters = new List<MessageParam>();
    [ProtoMember(1)]
    public List<MessageParam> Parameters { get { return parameters; } }
}
[ProtoContract]
[ProtoInclude(3, typeof(MessageParam<int>))]
[ProtoInclude(4, typeof(MessageParam<float>))]
[ProtoInclude(5, typeof(MessageParam<DateTime>))]
//...known types...
abstract class MessageParam {
    public abstract object UntypedValue { get; set; }
    public static MessageParam<T> Create<T>(T value) {
        return new MessageParam<T> { Value = value };
    }
    public static MessageParam CreateDynamic(object value)
    {
        Type type = value.GetType();
        switch (Type.GetTypeCode(value.GetType()))
        {
            // special cases
            case TypeCode.Int32: return Create((int)value);
            case TypeCode.Single: return Create((float)value);
            case TypeCode.DateTime: return Create((DateTime)value);
            // fallback in case we forget to add one, or it isn't a TypeCode
            default:
                MessageParam param = (MessageParam)Activator.CreateInstance(
                    typeof(MessageParam<>).MakeGenericType(type));
                param.UntypedValue = value;
                return param;
        }
    }
}
[ProtoContract]
sealed class MessageParam<T> : MessageParam
{
    [ProtoMember(1)]
    public T Value { get; set; }
    public override object UntypedValue
    {
        get { return Value; }
        set { Value = (T)value; }
    }
}

Note that the unreleased "v2" code offers much more ability to define the relationships at runtime rather than through attributes (which is quite limiting here).