What is serialization? When to use? How to implement in C#?

Question

[Serializable]
public class Pessoa
{
    public string Nome { get; set; }
    public string Cpf { get; set; }
}

• There’s only one kind of serialization?
• What alternatives not to need serialize an object?

Answer 1

Serialization: What is?

In computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of saving or transliterating one object on another on a storage medium (such as a computer file or memory buffer) or transmitting it over a network connection, either in binary form or in text format such as XML or JSON. This byte series can be used to recreate an object with the same internal state as the original.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialization (adapted)

There is only one type of serialization?

No. There are several types of serialization, the difference being the final data representation format. For example, using the method Json, library Newtonsoft.Json, you will get a JSON serialization. Using the object System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer, you can convert (or serialize) an object in XML format.

In JSON

var objeto = new { nome = "Nome", valor = "Valor" };
return Json(objeto, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);

Upshot

{ 'nome': 'Nome', 'valor': 'Valor' }

In XML

I’ll use your class:

[Serializable]
public class Pessoa
{
    public string Nome { get; set; }
    public string Cpf { get; set; }
}

Use:

var pessoa = new Pessoa { Nome = "Nome", Cpf = "123.456.789-01" };
XmlSerializer x = new XmlSerializer(pessoa.GetType());
x.Serialize(Console.Out, pessoa);

Upshot

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="IBM437"?>
 <pessoa xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3
 .org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <Nome>Nome</Nome>
    <Cpf>123.456.789-01</Cpf>
</pessoa>

How to implement in C#?

Serialization is already implemented in C# for different formats. Serialization should be seen first as a concept, and then as a language resource.

You can even implement your serialization to the format you want, but the ideal is to use components ready to avoid extra work.

Answer 2

Only complementing the answer already given by @Ciganomorrisonmendez.

Sometimes it is simply not possible to avoid serialization:

• transmit an object over the network

• transmit an object between Appdomains

• if you want to save an object to disk

In all these cases, a reference to the live object simply doesn’t make sense.