Converting Stream to String and back what are we missing

Question

I want to serialize objects to strings  and back   We use protobuf-net to turn an object into a Stream and back  successfully   However  Stream to string and back    not so successful  After going through StreamToString and StringToStream  the new Streamisn t deserialized by protobuf-net  it raises an Arithmetic Operation resulted in an Overflow exception   If we deserialize the original stream  it works   Our methods   public static string StreamToString Stream stream        stream Position   0      using  StreamReader reader   new StreamReader stream  Encoding UTF8                 return reader ReadToEnd             public static Stream StringToStream string src        byte   byteArray   Encoding UTF8 GetBytes src       return new MemoryStream byteArray       Our example code using these two   MemoryStream stream   new MemoryStream    Serializer Serialize lt SuperExample gt  stream  test   stream Position   0  string strout   StreamToString stream   MemoryStream result    MemoryStream StringToStream strout   var other   Serializer Deserialize lt SuperExample gt  result

User · Answer

a UTF8 MemoryStream to String conversion   var res   Encoding UTF8 GetString stream GetBuffer    0    int stream Length

User · Answer

I have just tested this and works fine   string test    Testing 1-2-3       convert string to stream byte   byteArray   Encoding ASCII GetBytes test   MemoryStream stream   new MemoryStream byteArray       convert stream to string StreamReader reader   new StreamReader stream   string text   reader ReadToEnd      If stream has already been written to  you might want to seek to the beginning before first before reading out the text  stream Seek 0  SeekOrigin Begin

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This is so common but so profoundly wrong  Protobuf data is not string data  It certainly isn t ASCII  You are using the encoding backwards  A text encoding transfers    an arbitrary string to formatted bytes formatted bytes to the original string   You do not have  formatted bytes   You have arbitrary bytes  You need to use something like a base-n  commonly  base-64  encode  This transfers   arbitrary bytes to a formatted string a formatted string to the original bytes   look at Convert ToBase64String and Convert  FromBase64String

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In usecase where you want to serialize deserialize POCOs  Newtonsoft s JSON library is really good  I use it to persist POCOs within SQL Server as JSON strings in an nvarchar field  Caveat is that since its not true de serialization  it will not preserve private protected members and class hierarchy

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I wrote a useful method to call any action that takes a StreamWriter and write it out to a string instead  The method is like this   static void SendStreamToString Action lt StreamWriter gt  action  out string destination        using  var stream   new MemoryStream        using  var writer   new StreamWriter stream  Encoding Unicode                 action writer           writer Flush            stream Position   0          destination   Encoding Unicode GetString stream GetBuffer    0   int stream Length             And you can use it like this   string myString   SendStreamToString writer   gt        var ints   new List lt int gt   1  2  3       writer WriteLine  My ints        foreach  var integer in ints                writer WriteLine integer            out myString     I know this can be done much easier with a StringBuilder  the point is that you can call any method that takes a StreamWriter

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I want to serialize objects to strings  and back    Different from the other answers  but the most straightforward way to do exactly that for most object types is XmlSerializer           Subject subject   new Subject            XmlSerializer serializer   new XmlSerializer typeof Subject            using  Stream stream   new MemoryStream                          serializer Serialize stream  subject                  do something with stream             Subject subject2    Subject serializer Deserialize stream                  do something with subject2             All your public properties of supported types will be serialized   Even some collection structures are supported  and will tunnel down to sub-object properties   You can control how the serialization works with attributes on your properties   This does not work with all object types  some data types are not supported for serialization  but overall it is pretty powerful  and you don t have to worry about encoding

User · Answer

When you testing try with UTF8 Encode stream like below   var stream   new MemoryStream    var streamWriter   new StreamWriter stream  System Text Encoding UTF8   Serializer Serialize lt SuperExample gt  streamWriter  test

User · Answer

Try this   string output1   Encoding ASCII GetString byteArray  0  byteArray Length

[c#] Converting Stream to String and back...what are we missing?

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