Serializing/deserializing with memory stream

Question

I'm having an issue with serializing using memory stream. Here is my code:

/// <summary> /// serializes the given object into memory stream /// </summary> /// <param name="objectType">the object to be serialized</param> /// <returns>The serialized object as memory stream</returns> public static MemoryStream SerializeToStream(object objectType) {     MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();     IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();     formatter.Serialize(stream, objectType);     return stream; }  /// <summary> /// deserializes as an object /// </summary> /// <param name="stream">the stream to deserialize</param> /// <returns>the deserialized object</returns> public static object DeserializeFromStream(MemoryStream stream) {     IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();     stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);     object objectType = formatter.Deserialize(stream);     return objectType; }  

The error I'm getting is as follow: stream is not a valid binary format. The starting contents (in bytes) are: blah....

I'm not exactly sure what is causing the error. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Example of the call:

Dog myDog = new Dog(); myDog.Name= "Foo"; myDog.Color = DogColor.Brown;  MemoryStream stream = SerializeToStream(myDog)  Dog newDog = (Dog)DeserializeFromStream(stream); 

Answer 1

This code works for me:

public void Run() {     Dog myDog = new Dog();     myDog.Name= "Foo";     myDog.Color = DogColor.Brown;      System.Console.WriteLine("{0}", myDog.ToString());      MemoryStream stream = SerializeToStream(myDog);      Dog newDog = (Dog)DeserializeFromStream(stream);      System.Console.WriteLine("{0}", newDog.ToString()); } 

Where the types are like this:

[Serializable] public enum DogColor {     Brown,     Black,     Mottled }  [Serializable] public class Dog {     public String Name     {         get; set;     }      public DogColor Color     {         get;set;     }      public override String ToString()     {         return String.Format("Dog: {0}/{1}", Name, Color);     } } 

and the utility methods are:

public static MemoryStream SerializeToStream(object o) {     MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();     IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();     formatter.Serialize(stream, o);     return stream; }  public static object DeserializeFromStream(MemoryStream stream) {     IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();     stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);     object o = formatter.Deserialize(stream);     return o; }