Serialization has no way of inherently dealing with version issues. And interfaces don't come in to it - serialization looks at your object's internal state via reflection (or a similar mechanism - I don't know that it uses reflection per se).
The best way to deal with this problem is to implement ISerializable and implement the two methods (ISerializable::GetObjectData and a private constructor) that are required for serialization. It's really pretty easy - they give you a property bag, and you write stuff to it as a series of name-value pairs. The tough part comes in when you try to rectify the delta between the old object that was saved, and the new one that you're trying to create. But since only you could possibly know how to do this, the runtime leaves it up to you. > -----Original Message----- > From: Moderated discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:ADVANCED- > [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Paul Currit > Sent: Friday, July 05, 2002 2:31 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Serialization and assembly version redirection > > I am persisting objects to a database using the BinaryFormatter. When > inserting new objects, I call BinaryFormatter.Serialize and store the > object as a byte array in a database table. When getting an object out of > the table I use BinaryFormatter.Deserialize to convert the byte array back > into the object. If the version of the assembly containing the > serializable type changes, can the serialized object in the database be > deserialized with the newer version. In other words, is there any way to > deserialize objects that were originally serialized under a different > version number, as long as the type's interface hasn't changed? Is this > even an appropriate use of the BinaryFormatter, since it is typically used > for ephemeral objects and not persistence? > > I've tried using the <assemblyBinding> config section, but in my tests, > deserialization is ignoring the assembly version redirection. > > You can read messages from the Advanced DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from > Advanced DOTNET, or > subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com. You can read messages from the Advanced DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from Advanced DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.
