Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

2.15. Store a Serializable Object to a File

Problem

You need to store a serializable object and its state to a file, and then deserialize it later.

Solution

Use a formatter to serialize the object and write it to a System.IO.FileStream object. When you need to retrieve the object, use the same type of formatter to read the serialized data from the file and deserialize the object. The .NET Framework class library includes the following formatter implementations for serializing objects to binary or SOAP format:

• System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter

• System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap.SoapFormatter

How It Works

Using the BinaryFormatter and SoapFormatter classes, you can serialize an instance of any serializable ...