C# Manually Deserialization

Question

I want to know if that's possible to manually parse a serialized binary which has been serialized in c#.

My end goal is to parse a serialized binary of a multi-dimensional array which has been serialized in c# and parse it in java,

I want to know if there is any algorithm/cheat-sheet that help me to understand the structure of a serialized binary?

Any pointers/hints greatly appreciated.

NOTE: I am not looking to deserialize the serialized object in Java, I want to know the structure of a binary serialized object, so i can parse it in a way that i want.

Wouldn't it be way easier to just use JSON / XML or your custom binary format that would be language agnostic? — Fildor
– Fildor, Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 14:07
I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. You could always try XML serialization, granted it's slower, but it's much easier to perform. You could XML serialize the arrays and easily get them back, better so, your code can be reused quite easily — Everyone
– Everyone, Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 14:08
Binary serialization works different in different programming languages. So you can not serialize an object in C# and deserialize it in Java. There is not in-built feature available in JAVA or C#. You need to write your own serialization mechanisms in both the languages. Else you can use XML or JSON serializaiton. — Chetan
– Chetan, Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 14:08
On another thought, you could also manually serialize using your own algorithm and just reverse the process on the other end. I do not recommend this unless you really know your stuff around serialization and even then you may end up with a lot of issues. — Everyone
– Everyone, Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 14:10

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

As suggested, XML can be great tool for this, here is a small demo example:

C# serialization:

// NEEDED IMPORTS using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Xml.Serialization; static void Main(string[] args) { // build a list of lists from 0 to 99 divided on // 10 inner list each with 10 elements List<List<string>> list = new List<List<string>>(); for(int i=0; i<10; i++) { list.Add(new List<string>()); for (int j = i * 10; j < i * 10 + 10; j++) list[i].Add(j.ToString()); } // serialize to xml XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(list.GetType()); TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter("serialized.xml"); ser.Serialize(writer, list); }

Sample output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ArrayOfArrayOfString xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <ArrayOfString> <string>0</string> <string>1</string> <string>2</string> <string>3</string> <string>4</string> <string>5</string> <string>6</string> <string>7</string> <string>8</string> <string>9</string> </ArrayOfString> ...

Based on the serialized XML, Java deserialization:

// NEEDED IMPORTS import java.io.*; import java.util.*; import org.jdom2.*; import org.jdom2.input.*; public static void main(String[] args) throws JDOMException, IOException { // build DOM from the XML file - generic for all XML files File fXmlFile = new File("serialized.xml"); // file we created in C# SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder(); Document document = builder.build(fXmlFile); Element root = document.getRootElement(); // build List<List<String>> using expected format if(!root.getName().equals("ArrayOfArrayOfString")){ System.out.println("invalid root element"); return; } List<List<String>> list = new ArrayList<>(); List<Element> children = root.getChildren(); for(int i = 0; i<children.size(); i++){ Element child = children.get(i); if(child.getName().equals("ArrayOfString")){ List<String> innerList = new ArrayList<>(); list.add(innerList); List<Element> innerChildren = child.getChildren(); for(int j=0; j < innerChildren.size(); j++){ Element elem = innerChildren.get(j); if(elem.getName().equals("string")) innerList.add(elem.getValue()); } } } for(int i = 0; i<list.size(); i++){ System.out.print(String.format("InnerList[%d]: ", i)); List<String> innerList = list.get(i); for(int j=0; j<innerList.size(); j++) System.out.print(String.format("\"%s\" ",innerList.get(j))); System.out.println(); } }

Output:

InnerList[0]: "0" "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9"

InnerList[1]: "10" "11" "12" "13" "14" "15" "16" "17" "18" "19"

InnerList[2]: "20" "21" "22" "23" "24" "25" "26" "27" "28" "29"

InnerList[3]: "30" "31" "32" "33" "34" "35" "36" "37" "38" "39"

InnerList[4]: "40" "41" "42" "43" "44" "45" "46" "47" "48" "49"

InnerList[5]: "50" "51" "52" "53" "54" "55" "56" "57" "58" "59"

InnerList[6]: "60" "61" "62" "63" "64" "65" "66" "67" "68" "69"

InnerList[7]: "70" "71" "72" "73" "74" "75" "76" "77" "78" "79"

InnerList[8]: "80" "81" "82" "83" "84" "85" "86" "87" "88" "89"

InnerList[9]: "90" "91" "92" "93" "94" "95" "96" "97" "98" "99"

This is a very simple demonstration of what can be done using XML. I am not doing error handling in this code.

Edit: The Java DOM builder is not directly from the JDK. You need to download it from their website: http://www.jdom.org/downloads/ and import the jre file to your Java project. I have also included the import statements needed for this operation.

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