Convert any object to a byte

Question

I am writing a prototype TCP connection and I am having some trouble homogenizing the data to be sent   At the moment  I am sending nothing but strings  but in the future we want to be able to send any object    The code is quite simple at the moment  because I thought everything could be cast into a byte array   void SendData object headerObject  object bodyObject      byte   header    byte   headerObject     strings at runtime     byte   body    byte   bodyObject         invalid cast exception       Unable to cast object of type  System String  to type  System Byte               This of course is easily enough solved with a   if  state headerObject is System String          The problem is  if I do it that way  I need to check for EVERY type of object that can t be cast to a byte   at runtime   Since I do not know every object that can t be cast into a byte   at runtime  this really isn t an option   How does one convert any object at all into a byte array in C   NET 4 0

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I d rather use the expression  serialization  than  casting into bytes   Serializing an object means converting it into a byte array  or XML  or something else  that can be used on the remote box to re-construct the object  In  NET  the Serializable attribute marks types whose objects can be serialized

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Using Encoding UTF8 GetBytes is faster than using MemoryStream  Here  I am using NewtonsoftJson to convert input object to JSON string and then getting bytes from JSON string    byte   SerializeObject object value    gt Encoding UTF8 GetBytes JsonConvert SerializeObject value      Benchmark for  Daniel DiPaolo s version with this version  Method                          Mean       Error      StdDev     Median    Gen 0   Allocated   -------------------------- ---------- ----------- ----------- ---------- -------- -----------   ObjectToByteArray           4 983 us   0 1183 us   0 2622 us   4 887 us   0 9460      3 9 KB   ObjectToByteArrayWithJson   1 548 us   0 0309 us   0 0690 us   1 528 us   0 3090     1 27 KB

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One additional implementation  which uses Newtonsoft Json binary JSON and does not require marking everything with the  Serializable  attribute  Only one drawback is that an object has to be wrapped in anonymous class  so byte array obtained with binary serialization can be different from this one   public static byte   ConvertToBytes object obj        using  var ms   new MemoryStream                  using  var writer   new BsonWriter ms                         var serializer   new JsonSerializer                serializer Serialize writer  new   Value   obj                 return ms ToArray                        Anonymous class is used because BSON should start with a class or array  I have not tried to deserialize byte   back to object and not sure if it works  but have tested the speed of conversion to byte   and it completely satisfies my needs

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How about something simple like this   return   object   value  Cast lt byte gt    ToArray

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Like others have said before  you could use binary serialization  but it may produce an extra bytes or be deserialized into an objects with not exactly same data  Using reflection on the other hand is quite complicated and very slow  There is an another solution that can strictly convert your objects to bytes and vise-versa - marshalling   var size   Marshal SizeOf your object      Both managed and unmanaged buffers required  var bytes   new byte size   var ptr   Marshal AllocHGlobal size      Copy object byte-to-byte to unmanaged memory  Marshal StructureToPtr your object  ptr  false      Copy data from unmanaged memory to managed buffer  Marshal Copy ptr  bytes  0  size      Release unmanaged memory  Marshal FreeHGlobal ptr     And to convert bytes to object   var bytes   new byte size   var ptr   Marshal AllocHGlobal size   Marshal Copy bytes  0  ptr  size   var your object    YourType Marshal PtrToStructure ptr  typeof YourType    Marshal FreeHGlobal ptr     It s noticeably slower and partly unsafe to use this approach for small objects and structs comparing to your own serialization field by field  because of double copying from to unmanaged memory   but it s easiest way to strictly convert object to byte   without implementing serialization and without  Serializable  attribute

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public static class SerializerDeserializerExtensions       public static byte   Serializer this object  object                   byte   bytes          using  var  MemoryStream   new MemoryStream                          IFormatter  BinaryFormatter   new BinaryFormatter                 BinaryFormatter Serialize  MemoryStream   object               bytes    MemoryStream ToArray                      return bytes             public static T Deserializer lt T gt  this byte    byteArray                   T ReturnValue          using  var  MemoryStream   new MemoryStream  byteArray                         IFormatter  BinaryFormatter   new BinaryFormatter                ReturnValue    T  BinaryFormatter Deserialize  MemoryStream                         return ReturnValue            You can use it like below code   DataTable  DataTable   new DataTable     DataTable Columns Add new DataColumn  Col1      DataTable Columns Add new DataColumn  Col2      DataTable Columns Add new DataColumn  Col3      for  int i   0  i  lt  10  i          DataRow  DataRow    DataTable NewRow         DataRow  Col1      i   1     Column 1        DataRow  Col2      i   1     Column 2        DataRow  Col3      i   1     Column 3        DataTable Rows Add  DataRow      byte   ByteArrayTest     DataTable Serializer    DataTable dt   ByteArrayTest Deserializer lt DataTable gt

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What you re looking for is serialization   There are several forms of serialization available for the  Net platform   Binary Serialization XML Serialization  Produces a string which is easily convertible to a byte   ProtoBuffers

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checkout this article  http   www morgantechspace com 2013 08 convert-object-to-byte-array-and-vice html   Use the below code     Convert an object to a byte array private byte   ObjectToByteArray Object obj        if obj    null          return null       BinaryFormatter bf   new BinaryFormatter        MemoryStream ms   new MemoryStream        bf Serialize ms  obj        return ms ToArray          Convert a byte array to an Object private Object ByteArrayToObject byte   arrBytes        MemoryStream memStream   new MemoryStream        BinaryFormatter binForm   new BinaryFormatter        memStream Write arrBytes  0  arrBytes Length       memStream Seek 0  SeekOrigin Begin       Object obj    Object  binForm Deserialize memStream        return obj

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Alternative way to convert object to byte array   TypeConverter objConverter   TypeDescriptor GetConverter objMsg GetType     byte   data    byte   objConverter ConvertTo objMsg  typeof byte

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You could use the built-in serialization tools in the framework and serialize to a MemoryStream  This may be the most straightforward option  but might produce a larger byte   than may be strictly necessary for your scenario   If that is the case  you could utilize reflection to iterate over the fields and or properties in the object to be serialized and manually write them to the MemoryStream  calling the serialization recursively if needed to serialize non-trivial types  This method is more complex and will take more time to implement  but allows you much more control over the serialized stream

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Use the BinaryFormatter   byte   ObjectToByteArray object obj        if obj    null          return null      BinaryFormatter bf   new BinaryFormatter        using  MemoryStream ms   new MemoryStream                  bf Serialize ms  obj           return ms ToArray              Note that obj and any properties fields within obj  and so-on for all of their properties fields  will all need to be tagged with the Serializable attribute to successfully be serialized with this

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Combined Solutions in Extensions class   public static class Extensions        public static byte   ToByteArray this object obj            var size   Marshal SizeOf data           var bytes   new byte size           var ptr   Marshal AllocHGlobal size           Marshal StructureToPtr data  ptr  false           Marshal Copy ptr  bytes  0  size           Marshal FreeHGlobal ptr           return bytes            public static string Serialize this object obj            return JsonConvert SerializeObject obj

[c#] Convert any object to a byte[]

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