C# serialization issue

Question

I am confused about the serialization sample from MSDN,

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.serialization.iserializable.getobjectdata.aspx

My confusion is, in method GetObjectData (which is called during serialization), will the method,

(1) serialize both the additional data (in method GetObjectData from AddValue) and the fields/properties of the class; (2) or just write the data in method GetObjectData without writing fields/properties of the class?

I have debugged seems (2) is correct -- no fields/properties data are serialized if GetObjectData method is used? Is that correct? (I am not an expert and just want to confirm here, but 100% confident about myself.)

Answer 1

If you implement ISerializable, you are reasponsible for all data (i.e. scenario "2" in your question); nothing extra is serialized automatically. What is your requirement? Things like DataContractSerializer can be property-based, allowing you to decorate both the regular fields and your custom property (that has some logic) and have them serialized properly. If you need binary (for space etc), then perhaps consider things like protobuf-net, which mixes the two while being space efficient.

So: what are your requirements?

Data Contract example:

[DataContract]
public class Foo {
    [DataMember]
    public int Bar {get;set;} // simple data

    [DataMember]
    private string DoSomeThinking {
        get {.... serialize the complex data ....}
        set {.... deserialize the complex data ....}
    }
}

Answer 2

If you implement ISerializable you must add all data (at least the data needed to deserialize) including all fields to the SerializationInfo using AddValue.

Answer 3

Im not sure what you want to achieve but isn't easier to let C# do the work for you:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace Test
{
    [Serializable]
    public class TestObject
    {
        private String name;
        private String note;
        #region Getters/setters

        public String Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }

        public String Note
        {
            get { return note; }
            set { note = value; }
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

Now you can use the XmlSerializer or BinaryFormatter to (de)serialize the object