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Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition
book

Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition

by Juval Lowy
July 2005
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
644 pages
17h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition

Serialization and Streams

Using a file stream isn’t mandatory—you can serialize an object’s state into any type of stream, such as a network or memory stream. Example 9-12 demonstrates how to serialize and deserialize an object to and from a memory stream, using the same definitions as in Example 9-4.

Example 9-12. Serialization and deserialization using a memory stream

MyClass obj = new MyClass();
obj.Number1 = 123;

IGenericFormatter formatter = new GenericBinaryFormatter();

//Create a memory stream
Stream stream = new MemoryStream();
using(stream)
{
   formatter.Serialize(stream,obj);

   obj = null;
   stream.Position = 0
               ; //Seek to the start of the memory stream

   obj = formatter.Deserialize<MyClass>(stream);
}

Debug.Assert(obj.Number1 == 123);

Tip

.NET remoting uses a memory stream when marshaling an object by value across app domains. Marshaling by value is covered in Chapter 10.

You can actually use a memory stream to clone a serializable object, too. Example 9-13 shows the static Clone() method of the SerializationUtil static helper class.

Example 9-13. Cloning a serializable object

public static class SerializationUtil
{
   static public T Clone<T>(T source)
   {
      Debug.Assert(typeof(T).IsSerializable);

      IGenericFormatter formatter = new GenericBinaryFormatter();
      Stream stream = new MemoryStream();
      using(stream)
      {
         formatter.Serialize(stream,source);
         stream.Seek(0,SeekOrigin.Begin);

         T clone = formatter.Deserialize<T>(stream);
         return clone;
      }
   }
   //Rest of SerializationUtil
}

The Clone() method first ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596102070Supplemental ContentErrata Page