NanoSerializer

Carrier-independent serializer-deserializer dedicated to minimum user code restrictions.

Features

• Custom constructors support. Serialized classes don't require parameterless constructors to be deserialized.
• Cycles unwind. Objects can reference each other and their data will not be duplicated even if two objects reference single another object.
• Carrier-independent. The serializer can be used with any data format without significant performance loss: Xml, Json... The only thing is required from user is to write simple data adapter.
• Private properties optional support.
• Custom serialization/deserialization support with ability to continue process for inner objects with current serializer/deserializer.
• Known types seralizers list with ability to continue process for inner objects with current serializer/deserializer. This is used to provide custom serialization/deserialization logic without implementing BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.INanoSerializable in target class.
• External serialization settings providing for classes that can't be modified.

Usage

Data Adapters

To operate with different data formats, the universal data adapters are used. System.Xml data adapter is included in Tests project. To write your own adapter you need to implement the BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.Adapter.IDataAdapter interface. Data adapters use DOM model, as the deserializer requires random access.

Serialization and Deserialization

The serialization is simple:

xml = new XmlDocument();
Serializer.Serialize((SystemXmlAdapter)xml, target);

To apply custom settings, create the BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.Serializer instance and provide BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.SerializationSettings.

The deserialization is also simple:

ModelClass result = Deserializer.Deserialize<ModelClass>((SystemXmlAdapter)xml);

To provide additional settings, create the BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.Deserializer.

Custom constructors

As mentioned before, deserializer can create objects using custom constructors. The main thing needed is to attribute properties and fields to be used as constructor args with BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.NanoSerializationAttribute with ConstructorArg set. After that their deserialized values will be passed into custom constructor with specified indexes.

Some deserialized objects may require some not serialized global environment objects. To pass them:

• Attribute constructor arguments with BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.NanoArgAttribute and give each argument a name.
• When deserializing, fill BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.Deserializer.ConstructorArgs with required global objects and their names.

Also, you can hint the constructor detector to use specified constructor among with others. To do that, attribute this constructor with BrokenEvent.NanoSerializer.NanoConstructorAttribute.

See tests as examples of all described above.

Performance

For now, the NanoSerializer doesn't beat NGen-generated XmlSerializer while producing much lesser XML. It beats the BinaryFormatter while providing XML slightly larger than binary stream. Comparison benchmarks are in tests project.

Try to test Newtonsoft.Json fails as it works much-much faster and produce lesser JSON, but it unable to deserialize test model (400k objects) correctly.

Credits

(C) 2017, Broken Event. brokenevent.com