ThePigeonGenerator.Utils.BinarySerializer

Allows you to serialize and deserialize objects who's size is known to and from a byte array representing the data structure in binary.

Note

This library only supports primitive value types¹ and other value types² on top of arrays of these types.
This has to do with this library mapping the data directly to binary. Reference types are dynamic by nature, so storing these in binary will need another approach.³⁴

Installation

Windows in Visual Studio:

1. Follow the steps here.
2. Search the package namespace seen above.

Universal:

1. Select the package
2. Select the version you'd like to install
3. Run the command listed above in the directory of the project you wish to install the package in.

Contents

Method	Explanation
byte[] BinarySerializer.Serialize<T>(T obj)	serializes the object into it's binary representation to the buffer which is returned.
void BinarySerializer.Deserialize<T>(byte[] buf)	deserializes T from the specified buffer at buf.

Additional Information

Writing / Reading the data in a file

In C#, you can use the built-in functions defined in File;

byte[] data = File.ReadAllBytes("./some/filepath.bin"); // reading the data stored at the path
File.WriteAllBytes("/tmp/dontdelete.bin", data);        // writing to the binary file

Not serializing certain fields

If you don't want to serialize some fields, you can utilise the built-in NonSerialized attribute

Footnotes

1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/builtin-types/built-in- ↩

2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/builtin-types/value-types ↩

3. This has been done with arrays, as they are reference types in C#. So 4 extra bytes are allocated per array to specify it's Length. ↩

4. If this is the kind of behaviour you are looking for, consider using a library like Newtonsoft.Json (or Newtonsoft.Json.Bson for binary-json). ↩