Binary serialization in C#

Serializing an object into a binary file is an easy and fast way to persist your objects.

If binary serialization is used to cache objects normally read from an XML file, a database or some other file format, you’ll get even more benefits.

After incorporating binary serialization into a C# application that loaded data from an Excel spreadsheet, I was able to get a 33% decrease in execution time by caching the generated object into a binary file. It’s a quick-and-dirty way to get a speed increase especially when you’re loading a lot of external data that changes, but doesn’t change frequently.

Serialization

The first step for serializing a class into a binary file is to mark the class as Serializable.

<br /> [Serializable]<br /> public class YourClass<br /> {<br /> // your class definition.<br /> }<br /> 

Now that your class is ready to be serialized, you can use ObjectSerializer. The ObjectSerializer class below allows anyone to serialize an object into a binary file. Serializing or de-serializing a class marked with the [Serializable] attribute takes no more than 3 lines of C# code.

<br /> public class ObjectSerializer&lt;T&gt;<br /> {<br /> protected IFormatter iformatter;</p><p>public ObjectSerializer()<br /> {<br /> this.iformatter = new BinaryFormatter();<br /> }</p><p>public T GetSerializedObject(string filename)<br /> {<br /> if (File.Exists(filename))<br /> {<br /> Stream inStream = new FileStream(<br /> filename,<br /> FileMode.Open,<br /> FileAccess.Read,<br /> FileShare.Read);<br /> T obj = (T)this.iformatter.Deserialize(inStream);<br /> inStream.Close();<br /> return obj;<br /> }<br /> return default(T);<br /> }</p><p>public void SaveSerializedObject(T obj, string filename)<br /> {<br /> Stream outStream = new FileStream(<br /> filename,<br /> FileMode.Create,<br /> FileAccess.Write,<br /> FileShare.None);<br /> this.iformatter.Serialize(outStream, obj);<br /> outStream.Close();<br /> }<br /> }<br /> 

To serialize an object using ObjectSerializer, first instantiate the ObjectSerializer class. Then use the SaveSerialziedObject() method to serialize the object.

<br /> YourClass yourObject = new YourClass();<br /> ObjectSerializer&lt;YourClass&gt; objSerializer =<br /> new ObjectSerializer&lt;YourClass&gt;();</p><p>// serializes yourClass to SomeFilename.bin.<br /> objSerializer.SaveSerializedObject(yourObject, "SomeFilename.bin");<br /> 

Deserialization

To deserialize the binary file generated from the previous operation, instantiate the ObjectSerializer class. Then use the GetSerializedObject() method to retrieve the original object.

<br /> ObjectSerializer&lt;YourClass&gt; objSerializer =<br /> new ObjectSerializer&lt;YourClass&gt;();</p><p>// deserializes yourClass from SomeFilename.bin.<br /> YourClass yourObjectFromFile =<br /> objSerializer.GetSerializedObject("SomeFilename.bin");<br /> 

And there you have it… quick-and-dirty binary serialization in C#!