💾 Binary Serialization

A class and set of functions for serializing and deserializing class-content into a byte array.

Introduction

I developed this add-on for my needs when working with Photon Realtime for a more convenient interaction with Network Events, based on strong typing. The plugin worked great, providing me with just one message type with a byte array body that allows me to serialize and deserialize messages in a matter of milliseconds.

Installation

Just copy a the source code of this repository into your Unity Project (Assets folder).

Usage

Declare an any class and declare fields in it.

private class TestSerializableMessage
{
    public int IntValue;
    public string StringValue;
    public Vector3 Vector3Value;
    public TestEnum EnumValue;
}

For initialization of the default binary converters use BinarySerializer.AddDefaultConverters():

BinarySerializer.AddDefaultConverters();

For registration new types for binary serialization use BinarySerializer.RegisterType<T>():

BinarySerializer.RegisterType<TestSerializableMessage>()

For serialization, use method BinarySerializer.Serialize(object):

var testSerializableMessage = new TestSerializableMessage()
{
    IntValue = 123,
    StringValue = "Test",
    Vector3Value = Vector3.forward,
    EnumValue = TestEnum.Second
};
var bytes = BinarySerializer.Serialize(testSerializableMessage);

You can send the received array of bytes and, having received it, deserialize it using the BinarySerializer.Deserialize(byte[] bytes) function.

var result = BinarySerializer.Deserialize<TestSerializableMessage>(bytes);
Debug.Log(result.StringValue);

Unknown type deserialization:

object unknownTypeDeserialization = BinarySerializer.Deserialize(bytes);

Custom serializator/deserializator

You need to declare class and inherit it from IBinaryConverter and add it to BinarySerializer's Converters:

public class BoolBinaryConverter : IBinaryConverter
{
    public Type SerializationType => typeof(bool);

    public void Serialize(object value, BinaryWriter bw)
    {
        bw.Write((bool) value);
    }

    public object Deserialize(BinaryReader br)
    {
        return br.ReadBoolean();
    }
}

// also add extension -converter for arrays of this type
BinarySerializer.AddConverterWithExtensions<BoolBinaryConverter>();

Performance

State	Duration
Adding default converters	00:00:00.0044790
Type registration	00:00:00.0019408
First Serialization	00:00:00.0050046
First Deserialization	00:00:00.0061455
Second Serialization	00:00:00.0001749
Second Deserialization	00:00:00.0001831
Unknown Type Deserialization	00:00:00.0002780

Supported Types

Primitive types:

• bool
• byte
• sbyte
• char
• double
• short
• ushort
• int
• uint
• long
• ulong
• float
• string
• Enum

Unity types:

• Vector2
• Vector3
• Vector4
• Vector2Int
• Vector3Int
• Rect
• RectInt
• RectOffset
• Quaternion
• Color

Collections of primitive and Unity types:

• Array
• List

License

Code and documentation Copyright (c) 2023 Alexander Travkin.

Code released under the MIT license.