A Complete Example

Given the following class:

class Person
{
    public int Id;
    public string Name;
}

Here's how we can serialize it to a stream:

void SerializePerson(Person person, Stream stream)
{
    var writer = new JsonObjectWriter(stream);

    writer.WriteStartObject()

    writer.WriteMember(1, person.Id);
    writer.WriteMember(2, person.Name);

    writer.WriteEndObject();
}

And here's how we can read it back:

Person DeserializePerson(Stream stream)
{
    var reader = new JsonObjectReader(stream);

    Person person = null;

    if (reader.ReadStartObject())
    {
        person = new Person();

        while (reader.MoveToNextMember())
        {
            switch (reader.MemberKey)
            {
                case 1:
                    person.Id = reader.ReadValueAsInt32();
                    break;

                case 2:
                    person.Name = reader.ReadValueAsString(250);
                    break;
            }
        }

        reader.ReadEndObject();
    }

    return person;
}

Note that new members can be added without breaking compatibility with older code that doesn't explicitly handle them. No extra coding required!

To serialize the object a different format, choose a different implementation of IObjectReader/Writer. No need to modify your serialization code! (See Supported Formats for details.)

This allows you to, for example, use a human-readable format like [JSON](JSON Encoding) during testing and easily switch to a more efficient binary format like [PBON](PBON Encoding) in production.