Question

To Serialize a class with protobuf-net, you neet to provide the class and property attributes [ProtoContract] and [ProtoMember(n)] — where n is 1,2,3,..,etc

Appart from cloning to a mirror image of a class, is it possible to serialize/deserialize a class we don’t have control over?

For example:

using ProtoBuf;

• Serializer.Serialize<Exception>(OutputStream, exception);

or

• Serializer.Serialize<Tuple<Data,Exception>>(OutputStream, dataWithPossibleException);

NB. say Data has [ProtoContract] / [ProtoMember] and the others do not.

possible approaches:

• It would be nice if we had “extension attributes” that worked like extension methods. [not possible]
• replicate the class locally and then copy to / from the object before serializing / deserializing [that would work, but productivity goes down]
• generate an external proto file/definition for the class and store this in resources? [anyone know how to go about this?]

Answer 1

There are options in v2 here:

• you can configure a RuntimeTypeModel telling it about types and members without needing any attributes
• for types that are awkward, a surrogate can be supplied to make serialization easier (it must have conversion operators to/from the original type)
• for APIs where the types aren’t static-typed, there is an option to include type metadata

Now, I think some of that addresses some of your points. If you can fully specify a scenario that is problematic I might be able to be more specific (or think of new ways of torturing the code to make it work).

But to answer the headline question (non-decorated): yes, in v2