.NET Framework Developer's Guide

Binary Serialization

Serialization can be defined as the process of storing the state of an object to a storage medium. During this process, the public and private fields of the object and the name of the class, including the assembly containing the class, are converted to a stream of bytes, which is then written to a data stream. When the object is subsequently deserialized, an exact clone of the original object is created.

When implementing a serialization mechanism in an object-oriented environment, you have to make a number of tradeoffs between ease of use and flexibility. The process can be automated to a large extent, provided you are given sufficient control over the process. For example, situations may arise where simple binary serialization is not sufficient, or there might be a specific reason to decide which fields in a class need to be serialized. The following sections examine the robust serialization mechanism provided with the .NET Framework and highlight a number of important features that allow you to customize the process to meet your needs.

Note
The state of a UTF-8 or UTF-7 encoded object is not preserved if the object is serialized and deserialized using different .NET Framework versions.

In This Section

Serialization Concepts: Discusses two scenarios where serialization is useful: when persisting data to storage and when passing objects across application domains.

Basic Serialization: Describes how to use the binary and SOAP formatters to serialize objects.

Selective Serialization: Describes how to prevent some members of a class from being serialized.

Custom Serialization: Describes how to customize serialization for a class by using the ISerializable interface.

Steps in the Serialization Process: Describes the course of action serialization takes when the Serialize method is called on a formatter.

Version Tolerant Serialization: Explains how to create serializable types that can be modified over time without causing applications to throw exceptions.

Serialization Guidelines: Provides some general guidelines for deciding when to serialize an object.

Reference

System.Runtime.Serialization: Contains classes that can be used for serializing and deserializing objects.

Related Sections

XML and SOAP Serialization: Describes the XML serialization mechanism that is included with the common language runtime.

Security and Serialization: Describes the secure coding guidelines to follow when writing code that performs serialization.

Remote Objects: Describes the various communications methods available in the .NET Framework for remote communications.

XML Web Services Created Using ASP.NET and XML Web Service Clients: Provides topics that describe and explain how to program XML Web services created using ASP.NET.