Question

I’m trying to serialize an object to a memory stream and then encrypt this stream and then write it to a file. Can’t figure out what’s wrong, the memory stream is empty after ‘decryption’.

    public static async Task SerializeToFileEncrypt<T>(T o, StorageFile file)
    {
            DataContractSerializer dsc = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));                
            MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
            dsc.WriteObject(memoryStream, o);
            DataProtectionProvider provider = new DataProtectionProvider("Local=User");
            var raStream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite);
            using(var filestream = raStream.GetOutputStreamAt(0))
            {
                await provider.ProtectStreamAsync(memoryStream.AsInputStream(), filestream);
                await filestream.FlushAsync();                        
            }
    }

    public static async Task<T> DeserializeFromFileDecrypt<T>(StorageFile file)
    {
        DataContractSerializer dsc = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
        MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
        DataProtectionProvider provider = new DataProtectionProvider();
        await provider.UnprotectStreamAsync((await file.OpenStreamForReadAsync()).AsInputStream(), memoryStream.AsOutputStream());
        return (T) dsc.ReadObject(memoryStream);
    }

Answer 1

You need to move to the beginning of MemoryStream once you’re done writing to it. Otherwise there’s nothing to read from it since you’re already positioned at the end.

This should work:

public static async Task SerializeToFileEncrypt<T>(T o, StorageFile file)
{
        DataContractSerializer dsc = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));                
        MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
        dsc.WriteObject(memoryStream, o);
        memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); // move to the beginning of the stream
        DataProtectionProvider provider = new DataProtectionProvider("Local=User");
        var raStream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite);
        using(var filestream = raStream.GetOutputStreamAt(0))
        {
            await provider.ProtectStreamAsync(memoryStream.AsInputStream(), filestream);
            await filestream.FlushAsync();                        
        }
}

public static async Task<T> DeserializeFromFileDecrypt<T>(StorageFile file)
{
    DataContractSerializer dsc = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
    MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
    DataProtectionProvider provider = new DataProtectionProvider();
    await provider.UnprotectStreamAsync((await file.OpenStreamForReadAsync()).AsInputStream(), memoryStream.AsOutputStream());
    memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); // move to the beginning of the stream
    return (T) dsc.ReadObject(memoryStream);
}