Encode OrderOject into a string

David Smith

'
Tutorial on Encoding orderobject into a string then Decode string back to original orderobject

Can someone assist me or point me to the right direction.

                        Random randomCreditCardNo = new Random();
                        string senderId = retailers[i].ManagedThreadId.ToString();
                        int cardNo = randomCreditCardNo.Next(5000, 7000);
                        int amount = chicken.getPrice();

                        OrderObject orderObject = new OrderObject(senderId, cardNo, amount);

3 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Vulpes15y ago
Here's a version of the previous program which uses Base64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64) to encode the object's fields as a string and then decodes the resulting string back to a clone of the object.

Note that, whilst this produces strings which are not human-readable (at least by casual inspection), it is not cryptographically secure. A much stronger cipher would need to be used to achieve that.

using System;
using System.Text;

public class OrderObject
{
public string SenderId {get; private set;}
public int CardNo {get; private set;}
public int Amount {get; private set;}

public OrderObject(string senderId, int cardNo, int amount)
{
SenderId = senderId;
CardNo = cardNo;
Amount = amount;
}

public static string Encode(OrderObject oo)
{
string s = String.Format("{0},{1},{2}", oo.SenderId, oo.CardNo, oo.Amount);
byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s);
return Convert.ToBase64String(bytes);
}

public static OrderObject Decode(string s)
{
byte[] bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(s);
s = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
string[] items = s.Split(',');
return new OrderObject(items[0], int.Parse(items[1]), int.Parse(items[2]));
}

}

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
OrderObject oo = new OrderObject("5", 5200, 6);
string s = OrderObject.Encode(oo);
Console.WriteLine(s);
OrderObject oo2 = OrderObject.Decode(s);
Console.WriteLine("{0},{1},{2}", oo2.SenderId, oo2.CardNo, oo2.Amount);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
David Smith15y ago
Can you send me an example putting the entire orderObject in non human readable language and then also decoding the the orderObject back to the original orderObject
Vulpes15y ago
Well, in the absence of any other info, the most obvious way to proceed would be like this:

using System;

public class OrderObject
{
public string SenderId {get; private set;}
public int CardNo {get; private set;}
public int Amount {get; private set;}

public OrderObject(string senderId, int cardNo, int amount)
{
SenderId = senderId;
CardNo = cardNo;
Amount = amount;
}

public static string Encode(OrderObject oo)
{
return String.Format("{0},{1},{2}", oo.SenderId, oo.CardNo, oo.Amount);
}

public static OrderObject Decode(string s)
{
string[] items = s.Split(',');
return new OrderObject(items[0], int.Parse(items[1]), int.Parse(items[2]));
}

}

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
OrderObject oo = new OrderObject("5", 5200, 6);
string s = OrderObject.Encode(oo);
Console.WriteLine(s);
OrderObject oo2 = OrderObject.Decode(s);
Console.WriteLine("{0},{1},{2}", oo2.SenderId, oo2.CardNo, oo2.Amount);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}

If the string needs to be changed so that it is not human-readable, then there are any number of ways to do it depending on how much security is needed.

Notice that it's not possible to decode back to the original object, just a clone of it.