Serialization

It is fairly easy to Serialize objects in Visual Basic.
What is serialization for?

Code:

---

Public Class Data

    Public Shared Sub Save(Path As String, Data As Type)
        Dim BF As New Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter()
        Using S As New IO.FileStream(Path, IO.FileMode.OpenOrCreate, IO.FileAccess.Write)
            BF.Serialize(S, Data)
        End Using
    End Sub

    Public Shared Function Load(Path As String) As Type
        Dim BF As New Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter()
        Using S As New IO.FileStream(Path, IO.FileMode.OpenOrCreate, IO.FileAccess.Read)
            Try
                Return CType(BF.Deserialize(S), Type)
            Catch ex As Exception
                ' File not found/cannot be read.
                Return Nothing
            End Try
        End Using
    End Function

End Class

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Don't forget to add the serializable attribute on the class you wish to serialize.

Code:

---

<Serializable()>
Public Class SomeType
    ' Properties...
End Class

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Best of luck,
NinjaNic

Small tip. You should encourage programmers to propagate the exception instead of returning Nothing when failing to deserialize from a file. I'm sure there is plenty of debate over which pattern is better, but when dealing with files, it's a common practice to let the user know that the file couldn't be read. Of course you can treat a return value of Nothing as failure but it gives no information on why it failed.

You can read this SO thread if you're interested in the debate concerning returning null vs throwing exceptions.