CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#serializationsystem.drawing
mindmaster
mindmaster

Reputation: 1755

How to serialize Pen in C#?

I have a Shape class wich contains 

public Pen outlinePen;

What I try to do is to serialize List of Shape, but all I have isType

'System.Drawing.Pen' in Assembly 'System.Drawing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' is not marked as serializable.

If i mark this field as [field: NonSerialized()] then I can't use my loaded objects, because outlinePen is null.

Are there any other ways to serialize System.Drawing.Pen?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2548

Answers (3)

Abbas
Abbas

Reputation: 6886

Pen is internally marked as non-serializable by .NET and it's sealed so you can't subclass and serialize it either. If you need to serialize graphics, you can look into the Metafile class which is specifically designed to store graphics and drawing objects.

Upvotes: 1

g1ga
g1ga

Reputation: 322

I would reccomend a different approach involving the execution of some logic when the parent object is deserialized.

[NonSerialized]
private Pen _penToUse;

[OnDeserialized()]
internal void Reinitialize(StreamingContext context)
{
    SwitchPen(); //now we can restore the Pen, the easy way would be 
                 //to store it in a static class in the domain
}

Upvotes: 0

Tigran
Tigran

Reputation: 62256

You should serialize only the data you interested in . Pen is a graphic object , so even if it would be possible, imo, it's not a good idea to store it.

For example in your case you can store PenColor, PenWidth and PenStyle like a PenDataObject, which is kind of Pen lighweght object specially created to store Pen data.

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 3

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