Question

I programmed a simple app in C# which gathers data from various sources and creates a clean-final-ready-for-use-data. It’s an array of a custom class which contains only primitive types (int, string, …)

Now, I want to use this data in another C# app. what is the best way (quick and clean) to export the data there? BinaryFormatter, XML, hand-made-text-file or something else?

another Q: can I store my data in a managed DLL by any chance?

Answer 1

Just serialize your objects using the built-in .NET object serialization. See:

Object Serialization in the .NET Framework

As you are simply loading them into another .NET application, the file format doesn’t really matter to much. I’d just go with an XML serializer. Yes, you can embed this data into a DLL as a resource.