Structure to byte array and back

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Ken Allen - 09 Mar 2006 19:17 GMT

Is there a relatively painless method for converting the contents of a
structure into a byte array and back again?

I have been using Marshal to do this, but it is a pain! To get the byte
array I have to Marshal.StructureToPtr() and then use Marshal.ReadByte()
to extract each of the bytes into an array individually. The reverse is
just as painful.

Is there no general purpose (safe) mechanism for achieving the same thing?

-ken

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Mattias Sjögren - 09 Mar 2006 19:37 GMT

Ken,

>and then use Marshal.ReadByte()
>to extract each of the bytes into an array individually.

You can use Marshal.Copy to get them all at once.

Mattias

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Mattias Sjögren [C# MVP] mattias @ mvps.org
http://www.msjogren.net/dotnet/ | http://www.dotnetinterop.com
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Stuart Irving - 15 Mar 2006 17:42 GMT

try this:

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();

BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();

bf.Serialize(ms, myStruct);

return ms.ToArray();

> Is there a relatively painless method for converting the contents of a
> structure into a byte array and back again?
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> -ken

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Peter Bromley - 15 Mar 2006 22:38 GMT

> Is there a relatively painless method for converting the contents of a
> structure into a byte array and back again?
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> -ken

Well, as long as you are unconcerned with endian, versioning, or struct
layout issues, this C++ code below might help:

__value struct MyStruct
    {
    ...
    };

...
MyStruct myStruct;
...
// copy to Byte array
System::Byte dstBuffer __gc[] = new System::Byte[sizeof(MyStruct)];
System::Byte __pin* dstP = &dstBuffer[0];
*((MyStruct*)(void*)dstP) = myStruct;
...
// copy from byte array (srcBuffer)
System::Byte __pin* srcP = &srcBuffer[0];
MyStruct myStruct = *((MyStruct*)(void*)srcP);

I know it looks ugly but it does work assuming the constraints I
mentioned above.

Cheers, Peter

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Structure to byte array and back

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