Serializing object graphs

Serialization is the process of converting a live object into a sequence of bytes using a specified format. Deserialization is the reverse process.

There are dozens of formats you can choose, but the two most common ones are eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

Note

Good Practice JSON is more compact and is best for web and mobile applications. XML is more verbose, but is better supported in older systems.

.NET Standard has multiple classes that will serialize to and from XML and JSON. We will start by looking at XmlSerializer and JsonSerializer.

Serializing with XML

Add a new console application project named WorkingWithSerialization.

To show a common example, we will define a custom class to store information about a person and then create an object graph using a list of Person instances with nesting.

Add a class named Person with the following definition. Notice that the Salary property is protected, meaning it is only accessible to...