Question

Here’s the code.

[Serializable]
public class HostedGame
{
    public int ID { get; set; }

    public int UID { get; set; }

    public String Name { get; set; }

    public Boolean Available { get; set; }

    public String Description { get; set; }

    public List<int> Users { get; set; }

    public int Port { get; set; }

    public HostedGame(int uid, String name, String description, int port)
    {
        UID = uid;
        Name = name;
        Description = description;
        Available = true;
        Port = port;
        Users = new List<int>();
    }

    public int CompareTo(Object obj)
    {
        int result = 1;
        if(obj != null && obj is HostedGame)
        {
            HostedGame w = obj as HostedGame;
            result = this.ID.CompareTo(w.ID);
        }
        return result;
    }

    static public int Compare(HostedGame x, HostedGame y)
    {
        int result = 1;
        if(x != null && y != null)
        {
            result = x.CompareTo(y);
        }
        return result;
    }

    public static HostedGame DeSerialize(byte[] data)
    {
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(data);
        BinaryFormatter bff = new BinaryFormatter();
        return (HostedGame)bff.Deserialize(ms);
    }

    public static byte[] Serialize(HostedGame obj)
    {
        BinaryFormatter bff = new BinaryFormatter();
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        bff.Serialize(ms, obj);
        return ms.ToArray();
    }
}

The code bellow doesn’t seem to work right:

HostedGame hs = new HostedGame(12,"Name", "Description", 8088);
String s = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(HostedGame.Serialize(hs));
HostedGame HACK = HostedGame.DeSerialize(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(s));

HACK.Port for some reason comes out being 7999?

When I just do this…

HostedGame HACK = HostedGame.DeSerialize(HostedGame.Serialize(hs));

It works fine.

So, what I’m asking is

1. Why am I getting a wrong value?
2. Is there a better way to convert the bytes to a string and back again?

Answer 1

You cannot use Encoding.ASCII.GetString to convert any byte array to a string. You are losing some data when you do this. Use Convert.ToBase64String instead. This one will make a string from any byte sequence without losing the data.

HostedGame hs = new HostedGame(12,"Name", "Description", 8088);
String s = Convert.ToBase64String(HostedGame.Serialize(hs));
HostedGame HACK= HostedGame.DeSerialize(Convert.FromBase64String(s));

Here is an example, that shows how using Encoding.ASCII loses the data.

var testBytes = new byte[] { 250, 251, 252 };
var text = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(testBytes);
var bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(result); // will be 63, 63, 63