How to quickly save/load class instance to file

Question

I have several collections of classes/structs in my app.

The class is just a class with fields

class A
{
  public int somevalue;
  public string some         


        

Answer 1

There are many serializers:

Part of .net framework

• XmlSerializer (standardized format, slow and verbose)
• BinarySerializer (proprietary format, medium speed, supports cyclic graphs, serializes fields instead of properties => annoying versioning)

3rd party:

• Json-Serializers (standardized format, text-based, shorter than xml)
• ProtoBuf-Serializers (standardized format, binary, very fast)

I'd probably use a ProtoBuf Serializer if the file may be binary, and a json serializer if it needs to be plain-text.