Andre,
Alright, this is where Data Structures come into place, knowing your file
structure that is.
Now there are many ways you can do this, which is why there are usaully a
couple courses in college on the subject. =)
Honestly, I think your best approach is to use a class and a formatter.
Basically, build a class that will contain the the different types of data
you want to hold, and use a binary formatter to write out the binary
equivilant (which will maintain object state). I think the class has to
implement ISerializable for this to work as well, I'm not positive because
I've only read/commented on the subject.
But looking at the infor in the BinaryFormatter class you should be able to
build a class/structure and call the BinaryFormatter.Serialize to output to
a file stream. How you layout your structure is something totally different
and up to you. But this should give you a good starting point.
BTW, appreciate this, it used to be a hell of a lot harder to do in other
languages, .NET made it cake.
-CJ
Sampel code ....
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary
Imports System.Runtime.Serialization
Module App
Sub Main()
Serialize()
Deserialize()
End Sub
Sub Serialize()
' Create a hashtable of values that will eventually be serialized.
Dim addresses As New Hashtable
addresses.Add("Jeff", "123 Main Street, Redmond, WA 98052")
addresses.Add("Fred", "987 Pine Road, Phila., PA 19116")
addresses.Add("Mary", "PO Box 112233, Palo Alto, CA 94301")
' To serialize the hashtable (and its key/value pairs),
' you must first open a stream for writing.
' In this case, use a file stream.
Dim fs As New FileStream("DataFile.dat", FileMode.Create)
' Construct a BinaryFormatter and use it to serialize the data to
the stream.
Dim formatter As New BinaryFormatter
Try
formatter.Serialize(fs, addresses)
Catch e As SerializationException
Console.WriteLine("Failed to serialize. Reason: " & e.Message)
Throw
Finally
fs.Close()
End Try
End Sub
Sub Deserialize()
' Declare the hashtable reference.
Dim addresses As Hashtable = Nothing
' Open the file containing the data that you want to deserialize.
Dim fs As New FileStream("DataFile.dat", FileMode.Open)
Try
Dim formatter As New BinaryFormatter
' Deserialize the hashtable from the file and
' assign the reference to the local variable.
addresses = DirectCast(formatter.Deserialize(fs), Hashtable)
Catch e As SerializationException
Console.WriteLine("Failed to deserialize. Reason: " & e.Message)
Throw
Finally
fs.Close()
End Try
' To prove that the table deserialized correctly,
' display the key/value pairs.
Dim de As DictionaryEntry
For Each de In addresses
Console.WriteLine("{0} lives at {1}.", de.Key, de.Value)
Next
End Sub
End Module
