SOAP Serialization in C#

SOAP Serialization

SOAP serialization uses SOAP encoding to produce compact serialization for uses such as web service.

Example

In this example we take an employee class. It has two attribute EmpId and EmpName.

using System;

using System.Runtime.Serialization;

namespace Example_Serialization
{
    [Serializable] 
    public class Employee : ISerializable
    {
        public int EmpId { get; set; }
        public string EmpName { get; set; }
        public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
        {
            info.AddValue("EmpId", EmpId);
            info.AddValue("EmpName", EmpName);           
        }
        public Employee(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
        {
            EmpId = (int)info.GetValue("EmpId", typeof(int));
            EmpName = (string)info.GetValue("EmpName", typeof(string));
        }

        public Employee()
        {
        }
    }
}  

In the above class  [Serializable] attribute should be applied. Serializable attribute tell compiler that all public and private properties should be serialized. If we don't want to serialize some properties then simply apply [NonSerialized] attribute. Some times we need more customization, in that case we implements ISerializable interface. It override serializations process. It has a method  named GetObjectData which actually serialize the object. And for desrialization we use a constructor where we write our deserialization code.

Now we can serialize and deserialize our employee class. Below code snippet will explain how to serialize our employee class using SOAP serialization.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap;

namespace Example_Serialization
{  
    class SOAPSerialization
    {      
        public void SerializeObj()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("SOAP Serialization starting");
            Employee emp = new Employee() { EmpId = 1, EmpName = "Hriday Ranjan Dutta" };
            Stream stream = File.Open("SOAPemployee.txt", FileMode.OpenOrCreate);
            SoapFormatter bformatter = new SoapFormatter();
            bformatter.Serialize(stream, emp);
            stream.Close();
            Console.WriteLine("SOAP Serialization done");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
        public void DeserializeObj()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("SOAP Deserialization starting");
            Stream stream = File.Open("SOAPemployee.txt", FileMode.Open);
            SoapFormatter bformatter = new SoapFormatter();
            Employee emp = (Employee)bformatter.Deserialize(stream);
            stream.Close();
            Console.WriteLine("Employee ID : {0}, Employee Name : {1}",emp.EmpId.ToString(),emp.EmpName);
            Console.WriteLine("SOAP Deserialization done");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }

      
    }
}

Output Serialized file

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:clr="http://schemas.microsoft.com/soap/encoding/clr/1.0" SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<a1:Employee id="ref-1" xmlns:a1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/clr/nsassem/Example_Serialization/Example_Serialization%2C%20Version%3D1.0.0.0%2C%20Culture%3Dneutral%2C%20PublicKeyToken%3Dnull">
<_x003C_EmpId_x003E_k__BackingField>1</_x003C_EmpId_x003E_k__BackingField>
<_x003C_EmpName_x003E_k__BackingField id="ref-3">Hriday Ranjan Dutta</_x003C_EmpName_x003E_k__BackingField>
</a1:Employee>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>