Deserialization of optional fields from BinaryFormatter

Question

I have an application that serializes data using BinaryFormatter. A member was added to the class that was serialized from one version to the next without chan

Answer 1

If you mark the new fields with [OptionalField] it should work, but I have heard reports of flakiness in some cases. I can't say for sure, since I avoid BinaryFormatter, because it has so many issues when versioning :) (plus, it isn't as "tight" as some alternatives, and has severe issues if you want to go cross-platform, or to CF/SL etc)

If you are implementing ISerializable, you might try:

foreach(SerializationEntry entry in info) {
    switch(entry.Name) {
         case "Name": Name = (string)info.Value;
         case "Id": Id = (int)info.Value;
         ...
    }
}

But again, must stress - this is doing things the hard way :p With this approach, you only process the data that is actually there.