如何将Collection转换为字节数组

Question

I have an ObservableCollection<Employee> how do I convert it into byte array[]?

The class Employee consists of, - EmployeeId - DateOfJoining - Age - Salary

The service I need to pass the collection to is expecting the data to be in byte[].
What would be an efficient way to convert observableCollection to byte[]?
Or do I just need to loop through the collection to create a byte array?

Answer 1

you can use a Binary Formatter to serialize your collection.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.serialization.formatters.binary.binaryformatter.aspx

var employees = new ObservableCollection<Employee>();


using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{    
    var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
    formatter.Serialize(stream, employees);
    var byteArray = new byte[stream.Length];
    stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    stream.Read(byteArray, 0, (int)stream.Length);
    // do whatever you want with the bytes now....

}

Answer 2

You have choices like Protobuf, Protobuf-Net, your own custom BinaryWriter "ToBytes, FromBytes". It really depends on what your receiving end desires, and whether they are using a generic documented format or a custom one.