What is Searialization in .Net

Serialization (known as pickling in python) is an easy way to convert an object to a binary representation that can then be e.g. written to disk or sent over a wire.
It's useful e.g. for easy saving of settings to a file.
You can serialize your own classes if you mark them with [Serializable] attribute. This serializes all members of a class, except those marked as [NonSerialized].
.NET offers 2 serializers: binary, SOAP, XML. The difference between binary and SOAP is:
• binary is more efficient (time and memory used)
• binary is completely human-unreadable. SOAP isn't much better.
XML is slightly different:
• it lives in System.Xml.Serialization
• it uses [XmlIgnore] instead of [NonSerialized] and ignores [Serializable]
• it doesn't serialize private class members
An example of serialization/deserialization to a file:
using System.IO;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

[Serializable]
public class MySettings {
public int screenDx;
public ArrayList recentlyOpenedFiles;
[NonSerialized]public string dummy;
}

public class Settings {
const int VERSION = 1;
static void Save(MySettings settings, string fileName) {
Stream stream = null;
try {
IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
stream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None);
formatter.Serialize(stream, VERSION);
formatter.Serialize(stream, settings);
} catch {
// do nothing, just ignore any possible errors
} finally {
if (null != stream)
stream.Close();
}
}

static MySettings Load(string fileName) {
Stream stream = null;
MySettings settings = null;
try {
IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
stream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.None);
int version = (int)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
Debug.Assert(version == VERSION);
settings = (MySettings)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
} catch {
// do nothing, just ignore any possible errors
} finally {
if (null != stream)
stream.Close();
}
return settings;
}
}