Byte for byte serialization of a struct in C#

Question

I\'m looking for language support of serialization in C#. I could derive from ISerializable and implement the serialization by copying member values in a byte buffer. Howeve

Answer 1

Just use this two methods:

public static class StructTools
{
    /// 

    /// converts byte[] to struct
    /// 
    public static T RawDeserialize(byte[] rawData, int position)
    {
        int rawsize = Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(T));
        if (rawsize > rawData.Length - position)
            throw new ArgumentException("Not enough data to fill struct. Array length from position: "+(rawData.Length-position) + ", Struct length: "+rawsize);
        IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(rawsize);
        Marshal.Copy(rawData, position, buffer, rawsize);
        T retobj = (T)Marshal.PtrToStructure(buffer, typeof(T));
        Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer);
        return retobj;
    }

    /// 

    /// converts a struct to byte[]
    /// 
    public static byte[] RawSerialize(object anything)
    {
        int rawSize = Marshal.SizeOf(anything);
        IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(rawSize);
        Marshal.StructureToPtr(anything, buffer, false);
        byte[] rawDatas = new byte[rawSize];
        Marshal.Copy(buffer, rawDatas, 0, rawSize);
        Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer);
        return rawDatas;
    }
}

And specify your struct like this (Specify the exact size and pack (align) by one byte. default is 8):

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit, Size = 11, Pack = 1)]
private struct MyStructType
{
    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public UInt16 Type;
    [FieldOffset(2)]
    public Byte DeviceNumber;
    [FieldOffset(3)]
    public UInt32 TableVersion;
    [FieldOffset(7)]
    public UInt32 SerialNumber;
}

Now you can Deserialize using

StructTools.RawDeserialize(byteArray, 0); // 0 is offset in byte[]

and serialize using

StructTools.RawSerialize(myStruct);