Serialization

[Serializable]

Serialization is writing an object as stream.Think you have a class which you need to save somewhere to disk to a database serialization makes it easy

Lets make an example:

Start by writing [Serializable]  over your class and derive your class from ISerializable we need a constructor to convert from serialization to our class in this example

public Color(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)

and also you need GetObjectData Method which serializes the object .I think the example is very self explaining.

   1: using System;

   2: using System.Collections.Generic;

   3: using System.ComponentModel;

   4: using System.Data;

   5: using System.Drawing;

   6: using System.Linq;

   7: using System.Text;

   8: using System.IO;

   9: using System.Windows.Forms;

  10: using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

  11: using System.Runtime.Serialization;

  12: using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

  13:  

  14:  

  15: namespace Master

  16: {

  17:     public partial class Form1 : Form

  18:     {

  19:         public Form1()

  20:         {

  21:             Color testColor = new Color(23, 23, 23);

  22:             MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(200);

  23:             BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();

  24:             bf.Serialize(ms, testColor);

  25:             ms.Position = 0;

  26:             Color verificationColor =(Color)bf.Deserialize(ms);

  27:  

  28:         }

  29:     }

  30:     [Serializable]

  31:     public class Color : ISerializable

  32:     {    

  33:         private byte red;

  34:         private byte green;

  35:         private byte blue;

  36:         public byte Red

  37:         {

  38:             get

  39:             {

  40:                 return red;

  41:             }

  42:             set

  43:             {

  44:                 red = value;

  45:             }

  46:         }

  47:         public byte Green

  48:         {

  49:             get

  50:             {

  51:                 return green;

  52:             }

  53:             set

  54:             {

  55:                 green = value;

  56:             }

  57:         }

  58:         public byte Blue

  59:         {

  60:             get

  61:             {

  62:                 return blue;

  63:             }

  64:             set

  65:             {

  66:                 blue = value;

  67:             }

  68:         }

  69:         public Color()

  70:         {

  71:             red = 0;

  72:             green = 0;

  73:             blue = 0;

  74:         }

  75:         public Color(byte r, byte g, byte b)

  76:         {

  77:             Red = r;

  78:             Green = g;

  79:             Blue = b;

  80:         }

  81:  

  82:         public Color(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)

  83:         {

  84:             Red = (byte)info.GetValue("RED", typeof(byte));

  85:             Green = (byte)info.GetValue("GREEN", typeof(byte));

  86:             Blue = (byte)info.GetValue("BLUE", typeof(byte));

  87:         }

  88:  

  89:         #region ISerializable Members

  90:  

  91:         public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)

  92:         {

  93:             info.AddValue("RED", Red);

  94:             info.AddValue("GREEN", Green);

  95:             info.AddValue("BLUE", Blue);

  96:         }

  97:  

  98:         #endregion

  99:     }

 100:  

 101: }