Developer’s Guide to Collections in Microsoft® .NET

Chapter 9. Serializing Collections

After completing this chapter, you will be able to

• Understand what serialization is.

• Use the serialization formatters.

• Add serialization support to your custom collection classes.

Serialization

Serialization is the process of converting an object in a defined way to a format that can be stored and retrieved. The formatted data can be stored in memory, in a file, in a database, through a data stream sent over the network, and in other ways. The storage format could be a plain text format, such as XML, or a pure binary format.

Using the Serializer Formatters

The formatter classes are one of the many ways to serialize data. Classes can also be serialized using XmlSerializer. The following examples use the formatter classes, ...