How to serialize an object into an array of bytes (Portable Class Library)

Question

I have an object that I want to serialize into byte[] in order to save it or move it around. Let's assume it's:

public class Message
{
    public MessageType MessageType { get; set; }

    public byte[] Body { get; set; }
}

public enum MessageType : byte
{
    Type1 = 1,
    Type2 = 2,
}

My code is a .Net 4.5, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 PCL (Portable Class Library), and all the libraries, examples, and answers I came across don't work with PCL, mostly because of their use of BinaryFormatter, which is not available in PCL.

So, how to go about it?

@Alex, yes I looked into it and was unable to make it work. I was getting XML-something exception. — TheBlueSky

Scott Chamberlain Scott Chamberlain · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-30T17:22:03

With a class that simple just write your own serializer using BinaryWriter and BinaryReader (Both useable in PCL projects)

public class Message
{
    public MessageType MessageType { get; set; }

    public byte[] Body { get; set; }

    public byte[] Serialize()
    {
        //Data will be serialized in the format 
        //  - MessageType (1 byte)
        //  - BodyLength (4 bytes)
        //  - Body (x Bytes)

        //We allocate a fixed buffer as we know the size already.
        var buffer = new byte[Body.Length + 5];

        using(var ms = new MemoryStream(buffer)
        {
            Serialize(ms);
        }

        //Return our buffer.
        return buffer 
    }

    //Just in case you have a stream instead of a byte[]
    public void Serialize(Stream stream)
    {
        using(var writer = new BinaryWriter(stream, Encoding.UTF8, true))
        {
            writer.Write((byte)this.MessageType);
            writer.Write(Body.Length);
            writer.Write(Body);
        }
    }

    public static Message Deserialize(byte[] data)
    {
        using(var ms = new MemoryStream(data))
        {
            return Message.Deserialize(ms);
        }
    }

    //Just in case you have a stream instead of a byte[]
    public static Message Deserialize(Stream data)
    {
        var message = new Message();

        //Use the default text encoding (does not matter for us) and leave the stream open.
        using(var reader = new BinaryReader(data, Encoding.UTF8, true))
        {
            //We do the same order of operations.
            message.MessageType = (MessageType)reader.ReadByte();
            var bodyLength = reader.ReadInt32();
            message.Body = reader.ReadBytes(bodyLength);
        }

        return message;
    }
}

Here is a simplified version if you are never going to use Streams for deserializing.

    public byte[] Serialize()
    {
        //Data will be serialized in the format 
        //  - MessageType (1 byte)
        //  - Body (x Bytes)

        //We allocate a fixed buffer as we know the size already.
        var data = new byte[Body.Length + 1];

        data[0] = (byte)this.MessageType;
        //We copy the data from Body in to data starting at index 1 in data.
        Array.Copy(Body, 0, data, 1, Body.Length);    

        return data;
    }

    public static Message Deserialize(byte[] data)
    {
        var message = new Message();

        //We do the same order of operations.
        message.MessageType = (MessageType)data[0];

        //Create a new array and copy the body data in to it.
        var body = new byte[data.Length - 1];
        Array.Copy(data, 1, body, 0, data.Length - 1);

        //Assign the body array to the property.
        message.Body = body;

        return message;
    }
}

How to serialize an object into an array of bytes (Portable Class Library)

1 Answers