Serialization is method to
persist the state of an object in order to have the ability to recreate the same
object when required. when the object is required to travel electronically over
the network, in such cases the objects are serialized at one end and
deserialized at the other end. serialization is one of the fundamental
requirements for techniques such as .NET Remoting.
Serialization in .NET are
of four types as shown in:
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- XML serialization allows
you to serialize objects into XML data format. However it can convert only
public properties of an object into xml data. Therefore it is referred to as
shallow serialization.
- In SOAP and BINARY
serialization technique the state of the entire object is serialized into a
stream of bytes. In cases where the object contains a reference to other
objects, even those are serialized. This type of serialization is known as deep
serialization.This overcomes the disadvantage of XML serializer to serialize the
private fields of an object.
The .NET Framework also
provides the SoapFormatter and the BinaryFormatter classes. These classes
implement the IRemotingFormatter and the IFormatter interfaces.
The main methods which
encapsulate the functionality of serialization are the Serialize and Deserialize
methods.
Here we study the soap
formatter�..
[Serializable]
public
class secreteClass
{
private
int myaccountnumber = 0;
[NonSerialized()]
private
string password = "qwerty321";
public
int MyAccNum
{
get
{
return
myaccountnumber;
}
set
{
myaccountnumber
= value;
}
}
public
string Passwd
{
get
{
return
password;
}
set
{
password
= value;
}
}
public
secreteClass()
{
}
}
Note: Here password is not
serialized and hence it is shown as �[NonSerialized()]�.
using System;
using
System.IO;
using
System.Collections;
using
System.Runtime.Serialization;
using
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap;
Public
static void Main()
{
try
{
secreteClass
objSecrete = new secreteClass();
objSecrete.MyAccNum
= 123321456;
//Soap
serialization technique
SoapFormatter
formatter = new SoapFormatter();
Stream
objfilestream = new FileStream("c:\\Myserialzed.xml", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None);
formatter.Serialize(objfilestream,
objSecrete);
objfilestream.Close();
//deserialization
Stream
objreadstream = new FileStream("c:\\Myserialzed.xml", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read);
secreteClass
objSecrete2 = (secreteClass)formatter.Deserialize(objreadstream);
int
Myaccno = objSecrete2.MyAccNum;
Console.Writeln("AccNo:{0} " +
Myaccno.ToString());
}
catch
(Exception ex)
{
}
}
Note: When building this
code, you must reference
the System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap.dll assembly.
This is the XML
file(Myserialzed.xml) screenshot, where the data is serialized and
stored.
Myserialized.xml
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:clr="http://schemas.microsoft.com/soap/encoding/clr/1.0"
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<a1:serderlize_x002B_secreteClass
id="ref-1"
xmlns:a1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/clr/assem/App_Web_1imlsxqk%2C%20Version%3D0.0.0.0%2C%20Culture%3Dneutral%2C%20PublicKeyToken%3Dnull">
<myaccountnumber>123321456</myaccountnumber>
</a1:serderlize_x002B_secreteClass>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
In the next article will
see other types of serialization techniques.