Serialization and Deserialization in C#

using System;  
using System.Collections.Generic;  
using System.Linq;  
using System.Text;  
using System.Threading.Tasks;  
  
namespace WindowsFormsApplication1  
{  
    [Serializable]  
    public class Employee  
    {  
        private string Name;  
  
        public string name  
        {  
            get  
            {  
                return Name;  
            }  
  
            set  
            {  
                Name = value;  
            }  
        }  
  
        private string Phone;  
  
        public string phone  
        {  
            get  
            {  
                return Phone;  
            }  
  
            set  
            {  
                Phone = value;  
            }  
        }  
  
        private DateTime DoB;  
  
        public DateTime dob  
        {  
            get  
            {  
                return DoB;  
            }  
  
            set  
            {  
                DoB = value;  
            }  
        }  
  
        private string Department;  
  
        public string department  
        {  
            get  
            {  
                return Department;  
            }  
  
            set  
            {  
                Department = value;  
            }  
        }  
          
        private int Salary;  
  
        public int salary  
        {  
            get  
            {  
                return Salary;  
            }  
  
            set  
            {  
                Salary = value;  
            }  
        }  
  
        [NonSerialized]  
        public string additionalInfo;  
    }  
}

private void Serialize_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
    Employee emp = new Employee {  
        name = textBoxName.Text,  
        phone = textBoxPhone.Text,  
        dob = dateTimePickerDoB.Value,  
        department = textBoxDepartment.Text,  
        salary = Convert.ToInt32(textBoxSalary.Text),  
        additionalInfo = "We don't want it to serialize"  
    };  
  
    BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();  
  
    FileStream fsout = new FileStream("employee.binary", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None);  
    try  
    {  
        using (fsout)  
        {  
            bf.Serialize(fsout, emp);  
            label6.Text = "Object Serialized";  
        }  
    }  
    catch  
    {  
        label6.Text = "An error has occured";  
    }  
}

Use BinaryFormatter to serialize the object in BinaryFormat. Make a file using FileStream named "employee.binary". In this file your serialized object will be stored. bf.Serialize(fsout, emp) will serialize the object "emp" and store it in file "employee.binary".

The next thing is to write the code to deserialize the object. Add a click event for Deserialize button. When clicking on the Deserialize button we want to deserialize the object and show its values on screen.

private void Deserialize_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
    Employee emp = new Employee();  
  
    BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();  
  
    FileStream fsin = new FileStream("employee.binary", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.None);  
    try  
    {  
        using (fsin)  
        {  
            emp = (Employee) bf.Deserialize(fsin);  
            label6.Text = "Object Deserialized";  
  
            textBoxName.Text = emp.name;  
            textBoxPhone.Text = emp.phone;  
            dateTimePickerDoB.Value = emp.dob;  
            textBoxDepartment.Text = emp.department;  
            textBoxSalary.Text = emp.salary.ToString();  
        }  
    }  
    catch  
    {  
        label6.Text = "An error has occured";  
    }  
}

Use BinaryFormatter to deserialize the object from file "employee.binary". After the object is deserialized update the values of text boxes.

Now let's execute our program and add some values to text boxes as shown below.

Click on Serialize.

The message says that the object is serialized. To make sure that it is serialized go to,

WindowsFormsApplication\WindowsFormsApplication\bin\Debug\employee.binary

Here you will find the file.

Now to deserialize the object, remove the text from the text boxes and change the date to something else.

Click on Deserialize and you will get the following.

Serialize object in XML format,

For xml serialization use XmlSerializer instead of BinaryFormatter.

XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Employee));  

Change the filename from "employee.binary" to "employee.xml" and use [Xmlgnore] instead of [NonSerialized] in Employee class. The rest will be the same.