Question

I having some issues with converting a large byte[] array into a strongly typed array.

1. I have an array which has been concatinated into one large byte[] array and stored in a table.
2. I want to then read this byte[] array but convert it to a strongly typed array.

As I have stored the entire array as a byte[] array, can I not read that byte array and convert it to my strongly typed version? At the moment its returning null…

Is this possible in one hit?

Thanks in advance, Onam.

<code>
    #region Save
    public void Save<T>(T[] Array) where T : new()
    {
        List<byte[]> _ByteCollection = new List<byte[]>();
        byte[] _Bytes = null;
        int _Length = 0;
        int _Offset = 0;

        foreach (T _Item in Array)
        {
            _ByteCollection.Add(Serialise(_Item));
        }
        foreach (byte[] _Byte in _ByteCollection)
        {
            _Length += _Byte.Length;
        }

        _Bytes = new byte[_Length];

        foreach (byte[] b in _ByteCollection)
        {
            System.Buffer.BlockCopy(b, 0, _Bytes, _Offset, b.Length);
            _Offset += b.Length;
        }
        Customer[] c = BinaryDeserialize<Customer[]>(_Bytes);
    }
    #endregion

    #region BinaryDeserialize
    public static T BinaryDeserialize<T>(byte[] RawData)
    {
        T _DeserializedContent = default(T);

        BinaryFormatter _Formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
        try
        {
            using (MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                _Stream.Write(RawData, 0, RawData.Length);
                _Stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
                _DeserializedContent = (T)_Formatter.Deserialize(_Stream);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            _DeserializedContent = default(T);
        }

        return _DeserializedContent;
    }
    #endregion
</code>

Answer 1

I think the problem is that you are serializing each item to a list, then concatenating the bytes. When this is deserialised this just looks like the data for one customer plus some unexpected data (the other customers) at the end.

I don’t know how your serialize method works but you can probably just change code:

    foreach (T _Item in Array)
    {
        _ByteCollection.Add(Serialise(_Item));
    }

To:

_ByteCollection.Add(Serialise(Array));

And that should work, then you could probably simplify it a little.