Serializing an Arraylist of an ArrayList

Question

I have a DatagridView in my application. I want to serialize the gridview columns into a XML-file. Serializing just the columns name is easy but I want to serialize the columns index too.

Serializing the columns would I do like this:

ArrayList array = new ArrayList();
foreach(DataGridViewColumn column in datagridView1.Columns)
{
    array.Add(column.Name)
}

using (FileStream file = new FileStream("test.xml", FileMode.Create))
{
     SoapFormatter formatter = new SoapFormatter();
     formatter.Serialize(file, array);
}

But I´m wondering how can I serialize the column index too?

Thanks in advance for any help!

What for do you use SoapFormatter for XML serialization instead of XmlFormatter?? — abatishchev
– abatishchev, Commented May 31, 2011 at 18:11
What version of .NET are you using? If you're using .NET 2.0 or above, you shouldn't be using ArrayList at all. — John Saunders
– John Saunders, Commented May 31, 2011 at 18:20

Juliet · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-31 18:18:32Z

Two things to note up front:

Since you're not creating a soap message, I'd recommend BinarySerializer or XmlSerializer for ad-hoc serialization.
You should definitely prefer a strongly-typed List<string> over an untyped ArrayList.

With that said, I'd recommend against serializing altogether -- its too heavyweight for your purposes, and its not a very good approach to long-term storage or transfer of objects (e.g. let's say you serialize a class in v1.0 of your app, then deserialize it in v2.0, all sorts of weirdness can happen).

I'd recommend the following approach: sort your columns by index, then write them out line-by-line to your file. Your columns will be ordered correctly in your file:

using(FileStream file = new FileStream("test.xml", FileMode.Create))
{   
    var columnNames =
        dataGridView1.Columns
        .Cast<DataGridViewColumn>()
        .OrderBy(x => x.ColumnIndex)
        .Select(x => x.Name);

    foreach(string column in columnNames)
        file.WriteLine(column);
}

score 2 · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-31 18:19:00Z

2

Create a public class ColumnInfo with Name and Index and you can store this to array list which can be searialized.

[Serializable]
public class ColumnInfo
{
    public string Name;
    public int Index;       
}

ArrayList array = new ArrayList();
foreach(DataGridViewColumn column in datagridView1.Columns)
{
    ColumnInfo ci = new ColumnInfo();
    ci.Name = column.Name;
    //ci.Index = column.Index; //decide how to get column index
    array.Add(ci);
}

using (FileStream file = new FileStream("test.xml", FileMode.Create))
{
     SoapFormatter formatter = new SoapFormatter();
     formatter.Serialize(file, array);
}

Update I personally use XmlFormater, I copied the source sample from question for example. Thank you abstishchev

edited May 31, 2011 at 18:19

answered May 31, 2011 at 18:03

user90150

6 Comments

Erika Over a year ago

@Gopalakrishnan Subramani - That could work but for deserialization then, how can deserialize the column name and the index for that column. Do you have any idea?

abatishchev Over a year ago

What for do you use SoapFormatter for XML serialization instead of XmlFormatter??

user90150 Over a year ago

Honestly I don't know SoapFormatter.. Since the OP already knows to use serialization with SoapFormatter, I used the same as an example.

Erika Over a year ago

@abatishchev - Dont really know why. Wich one is better in my situation?

abatishchev Over a year ago

@Erika: I recommend to use XmlFormatter for XML output and BinaryFormatter for binary

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