Binary serialization, IFormatter: use a new one each time or store one in a field?

Question

Using binary formatting for 1st time in .net C#

Code from MSDN is like this:

 IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
 Stream stream = new FileStream("MyFile.lvl", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write,FileShare.None);
 formatter.Serialize(stream, Globals.CurrentLevel);
 stream.Close();

Just wondering should I store an IFormatter in a field in my class and use it over and over again or should I do as above and instantiate a new one every time I save/load something?

I noticed it is not IDisposable.

Answer 1

There's very little overhead in re-creating a BinaryFormatter, most of the properties it sets in the constructor are enums, see here (thanks to Reflector):

public BinaryFormatter()
{
    this.m_typeFormat = FormatterTypeStyle.TypesAlways;
    this.m_securityLevel = TypeFilterLevel.Full;
    this.m_surrogates = null;
    this.m_context = new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.All);
}

If you were going to re-use it though, you'd need to synchronize access to the Serialize and Deserialize methods to keep them thread-safe.