C# Binary Serialization

Question

Hi all,

I am trying to serialize and deserialize objects to/from a Byte array for network communication, I currently have an interface 'ISerialize'. However I got thinking there should be a more robust way to do this via reflection.

I've looked around a little bit at doing this using BinaryFormater, but I can't see if it will give me the control I require.

EDIT:

I would like to beable to decorate a class as Follows (Where fields can be any type so long as they are a system type or are also [Serializable]) [Serializable] public class MyClass{

     [NonSerialized]
     SomeOtherClass _classFeild;

     [Position (0)]
     UInt16 _field1;

     [Position (14)]
     UInt32 _feild2;

   //..........
}

And have the following functionality,

void Test (){
     MyObject = new MyClass ();
     Byte[] raw;
     raw  =  Serializer.Serialize (MyClass); // Results in _field1 at raw[0,1]
                                             //            _field2 at raw[14-18]

     MyClass Deserialized  = Serializer.Deserialize<MyClass> (raw); 
}

where all fields are swapped to / from network order (bigendian)

---

I would also rather white list fields to be serialized rather than blacklist those not to be. So the question is, is can I do this using the Framework, or do I need to write my own implementation?

Answer 1

Sounds like a good fit for BinaryWriter and BitConverter.

Answer 2

I've gone ahead and implemented this myself now, however I am still interested whether a built in method exists.