DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
  1. DZone
  2. Coding
  3. Languages
  4. How to Serialize/Deserialize a Dictionary Object in C#

How to Serialize/Deserialize a Dictionary Object in C#

While serialization in .NET is pretty simple, in general, serialization of a dictionary object is not. Read on to learn how to tackle this tough problem.

Kunal Chowdhury user avatar by
Kunal Chowdhury
·
Aug. 06, 18 · Tutorial
Like (3)
Save
Tweet
Share
81.81K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

The serialization and deserialization of .NET objects is made easy by using the various serializer classes that it provides. But serialization of a Dictionary object is not that easy. For this, you have to create a special Dictionary class which is able to serialize itself. The serialization technique might be different in different business cases.

Today, let's discuss how to implement serialization/deseralization with a sample. Code is shared in the post, which you can use in your application. Continue reading and let me know if you have any other approaches.

To serialize a dictionary object, you need to first create a custom dictionary class, implementing the  IXmlSerializable interface. The interface contains three methods named GetSchema, ReadXml, WriteXml. You need to implement the logic in those methods. Below is the complete code for your reference:

[XmlRoot("Languages")]
public class LanguageSettings<TKey, TValue> : Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, 
                                              IXmlSerializable
{
    public XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; }

    public void ReadXml(XmlReader reader)
    {
        if(reader.IsEmptyElement) { return; }

        reader.Read();
        while (reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.EndElement)
        {
            object key = reader.GetAttribute("Title");
            object value = reader.GetAttribute("Value");
            this.Add((TKey)key, (TValue)value);
            reader.Read();
        }
    }

    public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
    {
        foreach (var key in this.Keys)
        {
            writer.WriteStartElement("Language");
            writer.WriteAttributeString("Title", key.ToString());
            writer.WriteAttributeString("Value", this[key].ToString());
            writer.WriteEndElement();
        }
    }
}

In the above code snippet you can observe that we are serializing the object as XML attributes. In case you have a different business need, you can change it to root element type.

Once your custom dictionary class is ready, you can start writing your dictionary object as XML file. Below is the logic to implement the funcationality with the XmlSerializer API:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(LanguageSettings<string, string>));
TextWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(@"languages.xml");
serializer.Serialize(textWriter, settings);
textWriter.Close();

You can also use XmlSerializer to read the XML and deserialize it to your dictionary object. You need to use TextReader to read the input stream from the XML file. Here's the code snippet:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(LanguageSettings<string, string>));
TextReader textReader = new StreamReader(@"languages.xml");
LanguageSettings<string, string> settings = 
                  (LanguageSettings<string, string>)serializer.Deserialize(textReader);
textReader.Close();

I hope that the post was useful and you would be able to use the shared code snippet in your project directly to serialize/deserialize a Dictionary object to/from an XML file. Please share your feedback about the post in the below comment section. If you have already implemented the functionality in different way, I would love to see how you did it. Do share with us.

Dictionary (software) Object (computer science)

Published at DZone with permission of Kunal Chowdhury, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • How To Use Terraform to Provision an AWS EC2 Instance
  • Pair Testing in Software Development
  • How to Create a Real-Time Scalable Streaming App Using Apache NiFi, Apache Pulsar, and Apache Flink SQL
  • A Comprehensive Selenium Locators Cheat Sheet

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: