Question

Currently i have an application that reads and writes several properties from one or two basic classes to a .txt file using the Binary Serializer.

I’ve opened up the .txt file in NotePad and as it’s formatted for the application it’s not very readable to the human eye, not for me anyway =D

I’ve heard of using XML but pretty much most of my searches seem to overcomplicate things.

The kind of data im trying to save is simply a collection of “Person.cs” classes,nothing more than a name and address, all private strings but with properties and marked as Serializable.

What would be the best way to actually save my data in a way that can be easily read by a person? It would also make it easier to make small changes to the application’s data directly in the file instead of having to load it, change it and save it.

Edit:

I have added the current way i am saving and loading my data, my _userCollection is as it suggests and the nUser/nMember are an integer.

#region I/O Operations

    public bool SaveData()
    {
        try
        {
            //Open the stream using the Data.txt file
            using (Stream stream = File.Open("Data.txt", FileMode.Create))
            {
                //Create a new formatter
                BinaryFormatter bin = new BinaryFormatter();
                //Copy data in collection to the file specified earlier
                bin.Serialize(stream, _userCollection);
                bin.Serialize(stream, nMember);
                bin.Serialize(stream, nUser);
                //Close stream to release any resources used
                stream.Close();
            }
            return true;
        }
        catch (IOException ex)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException(ex.ToString());
        }
    }

    public bool LoadData()
    {
        //Check if file exsists, otherwise skip
        if (File.Exists("Data.txt"))
        {
            try
            {
                using (Stream stream = File.Open("Data.txt", FileMode.Open))
                {
                    BinaryFormatter bin = new BinaryFormatter();

                    //Copy data back into collection fields
                    _userCollection = (List<User>)bin.Deserialize(stream);
                    nMember = (int)bin.Deserialize(stream);
                    nUser = (int)bin.Deserialize(stream);
                    stream.Close();

                    //Sort data to ensure it is ordered correctly after being loaded
                    _userCollection.Sort();
                    return true;

                }
            }
            catch (IOException ex)
            {
                throw new ArgumentException(ex.ToString());
            }
        }
        else
        {
            //Console.WriteLine present for testing purposes
            Console.WriteLine("\nLoad failed, Data.txt not found");
            return false;
        }
    }

Answer 1

Replace your BinaryFormatter with XMLSerializer and run the same exact code.

The only change you need to make is the BinaryFormatter takes an empty constructor, while for the XMLSerializer you need to declare the type in the constructor:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person));