Class Serializer

The main entry point into the serialization subsystem. Provides methods to serialize, deserialize and clone objects.

Inheritance

System.Object

Serializer

Namespace: Microsoft.Psi

Assembly: Microsoft.Psi.dll

Syntax

public static class Serializer : object

Remarks

For efficiency reasons the Serializer doesn't serialize any type information, and as a result it requires the user to identify the type being deserialized. In the case of polymorphic fields, the serializer collects type information in the Schema instance passed in to Serialize. The caller needs to provide this type info back when calling Deserialize.

Methods

Clear<T>(ref T, SerializationContext)

Clears the instance in preparation for caching it for future reuse as a cloning or deserialization target. The method is expected to call Serializer.Clear on all reference-type fields. This method is for custom serializers.

Declaration

public static void Clear<T>(ref T target, SerializationContext context)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
T	target	The instance to clear.
SerializationContext	context	A context object containing accumulated type mappings and object references.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to clear.

Clone<T>(T, ref T, SerializationContext)

Makes a deep clone of the given object graph into the target object graph, avoiding any allocations, provided that the target object graph has the same shape. Call this override from within custom serializers.

Declaration

public static void Clone<T>(T instance, ref T target, SerializationContext context)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
T	instance	The instance to clone.
T	target	An existing instance to clone into.
SerializationContext	context	An optional serialization context.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to clone.

DeepClone<T>(T)

Creates a deep clone of the given object. Except for the case of simple value types, this method allocates a new object tree to clone into. This can become a performance bottleneck when the clone operation needs to be executed many times. In these cases, the other Clone overrides which avoid allocations perform significantly better.

Declaration

public static T DeepClone<T>(this T instance)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
T	instance	The instance to clone.

Returns

Type	Description
T	The deep-clone.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to clone.

DeepClone<T>(T, ref T)

Makes a deep clone of the given object graph into the target object graph, avoiding any allocations (provided that the target object tree has the same shape).

Declaration

public static void DeepClone<T>(this T instance, ref T target)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
T	instance	The instance to clone.
T	target	An existing instance to clone into.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to clone.

DeepClone<T>(T, IRecyclingPool<T>)

Creates a deep clone of the given object. The method will clone into an unused target instance obtained from the specified recycler. The caller should return the clone to the recycler when done.

Declaration

public static T DeepClone<T>(this T instance, IRecyclingPool<T> recycler)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
T	instance	The instance to clone.
IRecyclingPool<T>	recycler	An object recycling cache.

Returns

Type	Description
T	The deep-clone.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to clone.

Deserialize<T>(BufferReader, ref T, SerializationContext)

Deserializes the given instance from the specified stream. Call this override from within custom serializers.

Declaration

public static void Deserialize<T>(BufferReader reader, ref T target, SerializationContext context)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
BufferReader	reader	The stream reader to deserialize from.
T	target	An optional existing instance to clone into.
SerializationContext	context	A context object containing accumulated type and object references.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to deserialize.

IsImmutableType<T>()

Returns true if the type is immutable (it is a primitive type or all its fields are read-only immutable types).

Declaration

public static bool IsImmutableType<T>()

Returns

Type	Description
System.Boolean	True if the type is immutable.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type to analyze.

Serialize<T>(BufferWriter, T, SerializationContext)

Serializes the given instance to the specified stream. Call this override from within custom serializers.

Declaration

public static void Serialize<T>(BufferWriter writer, T instance, SerializationContext context)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
BufferWriter	writer	The stream writer to serialize to.
T	instance	The instance to serialize.
SerializationContext	context	A context object containing accumulated type and object references.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
T	The type of object to serialize.