Deserializing a byte array

If I wanted to fill a struc开发者_JS百科ture from a binary file, I would use something like this:

using (BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(File.Open(filename, FileMode.Open)))
{
    myStruct.ID = br.ReadSingle();
    myStruct.name = br.ReadBytes(20);
}

However, I must read the whole file into a byte array before deserializing, because I want to do some pre-processing. Is there any managed way to fill my structure from the byte array, preferably similar to the one above?

This is a sample to take some data (actually a System.Data.DataSet) and serialize to an array of bytes, while compressing using DeflateStream.

try
{
    var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
    byte[] content;
    using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
    {
         using (var ds = new DeflateStream(ms, CompressionMode.Compress, true))
         {
             formatter.Serialize(ds, set);
         }
         ms.Position = 0;
         content = ms.GetBuffer();
         contentAsString = BytesToString(content);
     }
}
catch (Exception ex) { /* handle exception omitted */ }

Here is the code in reverse to deserialize:

        var set = new DataSet();
        try
        {
            var content = StringToBytes(s);
            var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            using (var ms = new MemoryStream(content))
            {
                using (var ds = new DeflateStream(ms, CompressionMode.Decompress, true))
                {
                    set = (DataSet)formatter.Deserialize(ds);                        
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            // removed error handling logic!
        }

Hope this helps. As Nate implied, we are using MemoryStream here.

Take a look at the BitConverter class. That might do what you need.

For very simple structs which aren't Serializable and contain only base types, this works. I use it for parsing files which have a known format. Error checking removed for clarity.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace FontUtil
{
    public static class Reader
    {
        public static T Read<T>(BinaryReader reader, bool fileIsLittleEndian = false)
        {
            Type type = typeof(T);
            int size = Marshal.SizeOf(type);
            byte[] buffer = new byte[size];
            reader.Read(buffer, 0, size);
            if (BitConverter.IsLittleEndian != fileIsLittleEndian)
            {
                FieldInfo[] fields = type.GetFields();
                foreach (FieldInfo field in fields)
                {
                    int offset = (int)Marshal.OffsetOf(type, field.Name);
                    int fieldSize = Marshal.SizeOf(field.FieldType);
                    for (int b = offset, t = fieldSize + b - 1; b < t; ++b, --t)
                    {
                        byte temp = buffer[t];
                        buffer[t] = buffer[b];
                        buffer[b] = temp;
                    }
                }
            }
            GCHandle h = GCHandle.Alloc(buffer, GCHandleType.Pinned);
            T obj = (T)Marshal.PtrToStructure(h.AddrOfPinnedObject(), type);
            h.Free();
            return obj;
        }
    }
}

Structs need to be declared like this (and can't contain arrays, I think, haven't tried that out - the endian swap would probably get confused).

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)]
public struct NameRecord
{
    public UInt16 uPlatformID;
    public UInt16 uEncodingID;
    public UInt16 uLanguageID;
    public UInt16 uNameID;
    public UInt16 uStringLength;
    public UInt16 uStringOffset; //from start of storage area
}