Serialization

Serialization Considerations

NOTE:

All sorts of custom serialization has been removed from the netstandard library.

Everything below refers only to the net framework library.

Objectives

As much as possible, we want both Currency and Money to be serialized. I definitely see scenarios where I serialize those objects, therefore I add support for serialization.

Currency needs to become as close to a singleton as possible. We do so for a number of reasons:

• Equality is evaluated only over the iso code, assuming all instances are created though the provided creation methods
• We want ot avoid having two instances of the same currency with different data just because one of them comes from a serialized instance of a previous version of the library

Another goal is store a little information needed in the serialized data. Just enough to be able to rehydrate a Currency and Money instance with the data and behavior of the current version of the deserializer library. For a Currency object that is the ISO code and for a Money object is the currency and the amount.

Options

Serialization is a delicate and complex subject. On one hand there are several (multiple) serialization models to be considered:

• Binary serialization
• SOAP serialization
• XML serialization
• XAML serialization
• Data Contract serialization
• Data Contract JSON serialization
• Simple JSON serialization
• Third party serialization models (Json.Net, ...)

On the other hand each serialization model comes with a set of requirements in terms of code security. For example, to fully control binary (and other models) serialization, ISerializable is the way to go. But it is not supported in Partial Trust environments.

I do not have enough user base with sufficient different usage scenarios to make a more informed choices, so I will take some default decisions that can be changed if we found they collide with the usage of most people.

Decisions

In this version I am commited to support fully customized:

• binary
• xml
• data contract (XML and Json) serialization

SOAP serialization is left out as it's deprecated.

XAML serialization is not supported as, either I do not have enough kwnoledge to meet my requirements or they are not possible to meet with the current version of the language.

"Simple" json serialization (JavaScriptSerializer) is left out because there are better (and faster) alternatives for serialzing to JSON.

Third party serialization models are left out of the library as I do not wish to take any non-framework dependency on the library. See Third-Party Serialization for supported libraries.

ISerializable model is supported to handle the requirements. If that means that most people can't use the library, we can reconsider that support.