Serialize a Static Class?

Question

What happens if we serialize a static class? Can more than one instance of the static class be created if we serialize it?

[Serializable]
public static class         


        

Answer 1

I found this answer realy useful for my setting class! 1000 thanks to you!

But i had to do some changes to make it working, due to a non-serializable object and change to BinaryFormatter due to servicepack compatiblity

public class SerializeStatic
{
    public static bool Save(Type static_class, string filename)
    {
        try
        {
            FieldInfo[] fields = static_class.GetFields(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public);

            object[,] a = new object[fields.Length-1,2]; //one field can´t be serialized, so shouldn´t be counted
            int i = 0;
            foreach (FieldInfo field in fields)
            {
                if(field.Name == "db") continue; // db cant be serialized! so get away.. not very pretty but does its job :)
                a[i, 0] = field.Name;
                a[i, 1] = field.GetValue(null);
                i++;
            };
            Stream f = File.Open(filename, FileMode.Create);
            BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); //Soapformatter -> .NET 4.5 -> doesn´t run under xp!
            // SoapFormatter formatter = new SoapFormatter();
            formatter.Serialize(f, a);
            f.Close();
            return true;
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString()); //Better error messages
            return false;
        }
    }

    public static bool Load(Type static_class, string filename)
    {
        try
        {
            FieldInfo[] fields = static_class.GetFields(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public );
            object[,] a;
            Stream f = File.Open(filename, FileMode.Open);
            BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            a = formatter.Deserialize(f) as object[,];
            f.Close();
            if (a.GetLength(0) != fields.Length-1) return false;

            foreach ( FieldInfo field in fields)  
                for(int i=0;i< fields.Length-1;i++) //I ran into problems that some fields are dropped,now everyone is compared to everyone, problem fixed
                    if (field.Name == (a[i, 0] as string))
                        field.SetValue(null, a[i,1]);
            return true;
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            return false;
        }
    }
}