sending/receiving objects through tcpclient

Question

Hello!

i have to send/recieve objects(of a custom class made by me) in my c# .net 4.0 app and i would like a good tutorial to get me started because i've searched on google and there seem to be a lot of problems with serialization/ deserialization and although the problems we're solved, there are a lot of ugly hacks .

Regards, Alexandru Badescu

Answer 1

If you have control over the objects you could decorate them with the [Serializable] attribute and use BinaryFormatter for serialization/deserialization.

Answer 2

For TCP/IP communication I highly recommend Stephen Cleary's FAQ, you should pay special attention to Message Framing. You might also want to take a look at his NitoSockets implementation.

All that assuming you can't just use WCF, of course.

Answer 3

If you talking about how to use tcpclient via socket programming in

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4036251/how-to-connect-to-modems-within-tcp-clients-in-multiple-port-or-other-way

there is a sample written by jgauffin and it referenced to

• http://fadd.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/58858#1054902
• http://fadd.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/58859#1054893

which both of them are very useful, if you see the question this helps didn't solved my problem but helped me to have a good and simple test cases (i have it before with more complexity).

Also refrences provided by A_Nablsi are usefull to have a good sample.

But if you talking about WCF service :D there is nothing.

Answer 4

I've made a transport that does just this:

http://fadd.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/58859#1054822

The library is work in progress, but the BinaryTransport works. It will also attempt to reconnect if it get disconnected.

Example:

public class Example
{
    private BinaryTransport<Packet> _client;
    private ServerExample _server;

    public void Run()
    {
        // start server
        _server = new ServerExample();
        _server.Start(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Loopback, 1234));

        // start client
        _client = new BinaryTransport<Packet>(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Loopback, 1234));

        // send stuff from client to server
        _client.Send("Hello world!");

        // send custom object
        _client.Send(new User { FirstName = "Jonas", LastName = "Gauffin" });
    }
}


public class ServerExample
{
    private readonly List<BinaryTransport<Packet>> _clients = new List<BinaryTransport<Packet>>();
    private SimpleServer _server;

    private void OnClientAccepted(Socket socket)
    {
        var client = new BinaryTransport<Packet>(socket);
        client.Disconnected += OnDisconnected;
        client.ObjectReceived += OnObject;

        _clients.Add(client);
    }

    private void OnDisconnected(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var transport = (BinaryTransport<Packet>) sender;
        transport.Disconnected -= OnDisconnected;
        transport.ObjectReceived -= OnObject;
    }

    private void OnObject(object sender, ObjectEventArgs<Packet> e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("We received: " + e.Object.Value);
    }

    public void Start(IPEndPoint listenAddress)
    {
        _server = new SimpleServer(listenAddress, OnClientAccepted);
        _server.Start(5);
    }
}

[Serializable]
public class Packet
{
    public object Value { get; set; }
}

[Serializable]
public class User
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}