Question

I want to deserialize an object but don’t know the class up front. So, consider the following code…

IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); Stream stream = new FileStream('MyFile.bin', FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read); MyObject obj = (MyObject)formatter.Deserialize(stream); 

What could I do if I don’t know the class up front? Say, for example ‘MyFile.bin’ was a MyObject or a MyFoo. How do I determine which object to instantiate?

Something like…

if (magic happens here == typeof(MyObject))       MyObject obj = (MyObject) formatter.Deserialize(stream);    else if (more magic happens here == typeof(MyFoo))       MyFoo foo = (MyFoo)formatter.Deserialize(stream); 

Answer 1

Just do:

object result = formatter.Deserialize(stream);  Type t = result.GetType();