Serialize in a human readable text format

Question

Is there a way in .NET 2.0 (C#) to serialize object like you do using XmlSerializer in a simple / customizable human readable format thats for instance looks like PXLS or JSON? Also I know that XML is human readable, I'm looking for something with less annoying redundancy, something that you can output to the console as a result for the user.

Answer 1

To Serialize into JSON in .NET you do as follows:

public static string ToJson(IEnumerable collection)
        {
            DataContractJsonSerializer ser = new DataContractJsonSerializer(collection.GetType());
            string json;
            using (MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream())
            {
                XmlDictionaryWriter writer = JsonReaderWriterFactory.CreateJsonWriter(m);
                ser.WriteObject(m, collection);
                writer.Flush();

                json = Encoding.Default.GetString(m.ToArray());
            }
            return json;
        }

The collections item need to have the "DataContract" attribute, and each member you wish to be serialized into the JSON must have the "DataMember" attibute.

It's possible that this only works for .NET 3.5. But there is an equally simple version for 2.0 aswell...

Answer 2

I found a exaustive documentation here:

http://pietschsoft.com/post/2008/02/NET-35-JSON-Serialization-using-the-DataContractJsonSerializer.aspx

with this usefull class (support generics)

using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Json;

public class JSONHelper
{
  public static string Serialize<T>(T obj)
  {
      DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(obj.GetType());
      MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
      serializer.WriteObject(ms, obj);
      string retVal = Encoding.Default.GetString(ms.ToArray());
      ms.Dispose();
      return retVal;
  }

  public static T Deserialize<T>(string json)
  {
      T obj = Activator.CreateInstance<T>();
      MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(json));
      DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(obj.GetType());
      obj = (T)serializer.ReadObject(ms);
      ms.Close();
      ms.Dispose();
      return obj;
  }
}