Fun with Deserialization

More fun serialization, this time with deserialization.

Currently working on a .net project whose feature set will allow my to replace some older third party libraries used in a VB6 project that do not work properly under Vista 64bit edition.

Things that I have successfully completed:

• Replaced Microsoft IE6 era Web browser control with a .net webbrowser control in a winform.
  
• Replaced functionality of Microsoft Internet transfer control to download online files.
• Successfully extended Google Picasa API and Blogger API to VB6 through COM interop type library
• Successfully implemented binary serialization of Picasa and Blogger caching the data locally.
  

DRCWinformUI.DLL - COM Interop assembly exposing methods/events for use in VB6 project
PicasaBloggerUserControls.DLL - .net 2.0 framework

Now to the problem: Deserialization:

Implemented code to de-serialize objects, which works fine in .net test app, but fails over COM:
SerializationException: Cannot find assembly...

Found the following articles:
Excellent article from http://spazzarama.wordpress.com/ describing the exact same problem:

C# – BinaryFormatter.Deserialize is “Unable to find assembly”

Documentation for SerializationBinder Class

I must give props to a co-worker Tom G. who pointed me in the correct direction of properly resolving the assembly by name. A problem that was solved at work on another project.

Fun with Binary Serialization

Articles to read...
How to serialize an object which is NOT marked as 'Serializable' using a surrogate.
C# Tutorial - Serialize Objects to a File
Serialization in C#
Object Serialization using C#

Sample code - will serialize class with child classes that are not explicitly serializable. (Work in progress though).

SurrogateSelector ss = new SurrogateSelector();
PicasaAlbumAccessorSurrogate aass = new PicasaAlbumAccessorSurrogate();
PicasaEntrySurrogate pess = new PicasaEntrySurrogate();
PicasaFeedSurrogate pfss = new PicasaFeedSurrogate();

ss.AddSurrogate(typeof(AlbumAccessor),
new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.All), aass);
ss.AddSurrogate(typeof(PicasaEntry),
new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.All), pess);
ss.AddSurrogate(typeof(PicasaFeed),
new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.All), pfss);

BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
string filename = string.Format("{0}\\album_{1}_{2}_{3}.dat",
System.Environment.CurrentDirectory, _accessor.AlbumAuthor,
_accessor.Name, _accessor.Id);
FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Create);
formatter.SurrogateSelector = ss;
formatter.Serialize(fs, this);
fs.Close();