I have an ObservableCollection<Employee> how do I convert it into byte array[]?
The class Employee consists of, - EmployeeId - DateOfJoining - Age - Salary
The service I need to pass the collection to is expecting the data to be in byte[].
What would be an efficient way to convert observableCollection to byte[]?
Or do I just need to loop through the collection to create a byte array?
you can use a Binary Formatter to serialize your collection.
var employees = new ObservableCollection<Employee>();
using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
formatter.Serialize(stream, employees);
var byteArray = new byte[stream.Length];
stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
stream.Read(byteArray, 0, (int)stream.Length);
// do whatever you want with the bytes now....
}
You have choices like Protobuf, Protobuf-Net, your own custom BinaryWriter "ToBytes, FromBytes". It really depends on what your receiving end desires, and whether they are using a generic documented format or a custom one.
The service I need to pass the collection to is expecting the data to be in byte[]In what format/protocol? BinaryFormatter is only one of the many alternatives. for ex, int i = 1; binaryWriter.Write(i); or Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(i.ToString());