Question

I am working on a program, where I save it’s project files by serializing Project class.
Because I am still working on it, some classes, that are part of Project class, do change from time to time (e.g. class got new property). It makes "simple" deserialization impossible.

Is there any way to solve it ? I mean, without writng custom serializer ? (which probably is something high above my level for now)

Just in case, I am using BinaryFormatter.

Answer 1

With help from Merlyn Morgan-Graham’s comments I’ve found solution, that will work for me.

Versioning described in Version Tolerant Serialization is really good idea, but when I use only [Serializable] attribute.

I forgot to write (my mistake), that I am using ISerializable interface.
I’ve found, that in deserialization constructor SerializationInfo object has MemberCount property, which solves my problem if I only add new properties/members from time to time. With this information, new members/properties, that can’t be deserialized from older file, can be set to default or maybe I can use some prompt form.

Other way here would be using something like assembly version in deserialization, as a first deserialized member. This can solve deserialization problems with more complex class changes.

Either way, I agree with Merylin – “if you can’t script something, you shouldn’t be building it”. 😉