modulexcite / binaryserializationanalysis Goto Github PK

This is a simple project / class for peeking into the contents / structure of a stream that was created by the "BinaryFormatter" class' "Serialize" method.

In one project I was working on I found that the stream was much larger than I expected, and wanted to know what kind of problem might be causing it.

I couldn't find anything online to do this (and my stack overflow question at http://stackoverflow.com/q/3052202/74296 got no relevant responses), so I spent a few hours coding to Microsoft's spec, and it seems to work!

The relevant references I could find were Microsoft's official spec, and an unofficial analysis from Lluis Sanchez Gual, a contributor to the Mono project:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc236844(PROT.10).aspx
• http://primates.ximian.com/~lluis/dist/binary_serialization_format.htm

This is simple demo code, not fit for any particular purpose, etc etc. I'm releasing it under the Modified (3-clause) BSD license, so you can do just about anything with it as long as you don't blame me when it goes wrong, and don't republish the code without at least mentioning me :)

A lot can be done to improve its structure and clarity (and "Analysis" output), but I have little motivation to clean it up at this point.

Any questions, thoughts, suggestions for improvement, please contact me!

Tao Klerks

[email protected]

ChangeLog:

• 2010-06: Original demo code
• 2011-11: Fix to "decimal" handling, github project (thanks Ian Wright!)