Binary serialization

Let's implement some serialization.

We are going to convert integers to bytes.

So, let's serialize some bytes to a file:

We start by creating a FileStream

using (var fileStream = new FileStream("data", FileMode.Create))

}

This data file will be created in the bin\Debug folder of the project.

Now, let's write some bytes to the file:

using (var fileStream = new FileStream("data", FileMode.Create))
{
    for (var i = 1; i <= 20; i++)
    {
        fileStream.WriteByte((byte)i);
    }
}

And the file shows this content:

Well, yes... 😆

Now, let's try to read the bytes from the file.

Firstly, we need to set the beginning of the file:

fileStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

Then, we can use a for loop to read the bytes one by one again:

for (var i = 0; i < fileStream.Length; i++)
{
    var number = fileStream.ReadByte();
    Console.WriteLine(number);
}

This is the whole code:

using (var fileStream = new FileStream("data", FileMode.Create))
{
    // writing
    for (var i = 1; i <= 20; i++)
    {
        fileStream.WriteByte((byte)i);
    }

    // reading
    fileStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    
    for (var i = 0; i < fileStream.Length; i++)
    {
        var number = fileStream.ReadByte();
        Console.WriteLine(number);
    }
}

Of course, you would have separated these in two functions, creating an array etc.

But this is just to show how to serialize integers to bytes. 😄

# Binary serialization

Binary serialization