The basics of serialization
Serialization is the process of converting data into a format that allows you to transfer it, store it, and later deconstruct it back.
This process is illustrated in the following diagram:
Figure 4.1 – The serialization and deserialization process
As illustrated in the diagram, the process of transforming the original data is called serialization, and the reverse process of transforming it back is called deserialization.
Serialization has two primary use cases:
- Transferring the data between services, acting as a common language between them
- Encoding and decoding arbitrary data for storage, allowing you to store complex data structures as byte arrays or regular strings
In Chapter 2, while scaffolding our applications, we created our HTTP API endpoints and set them to return JSON responses to the callers. In that case, JSON played the role of a serialization format, allowing us to transform our data...
