C# Serialization - Could not find the assembly

Question

I am working on C# TCP Server-Client programming. My problem is simple but somehow i couldnt figure it out.

I have an object i would like to seriliaze this object send over socket and deserialize client side. But problem is with deserializing. I serialize object with binaryformatter. Actually i am getting the actual byte array i should. But somehow while deserializing i am getting

System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException: 'Multi Server, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutural, PublicTokenKey=Null' assembly could not found.

When i try to deserialize on the server side after serializing it has no problem.

I tried to customize binder which didnt work also. I really appriciate if somebody could help me.

The client has a reference to the assembly containing the class? — Sami Kuhmonen, Apr 04 '18 at 08:03
according to what i readi should do something like this people are talking about .dll's and so on but how can i do that? — Emirhan Özsoy, Apr 04 '18 at 08:06
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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '18 at 08:18

If I'm guessing correct, you have 2 projects - "Multi Client" and "Multi Server". You serialize object defined in "Multi Server" and then you have a copy of that class in "Multi Client".

So you serialize an object "MultiServer.SomeClass" and then you want to make it a "MultiClient.SomeClass". This ain't gonna work.

You need to create a common dll project (let's name it "MultiCommon", where you will put your class, and reference it by both "MultiServer" and "MultiClient". In this way, you will serialize and deserialize not "MultiServer.SomeClass" but "MultiCommon.SomeClass".

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '18 at 08:54

It sounds like you're using BinaryFormatter, in which case frankly I think the most valuable advice would be: don't do that. The data format of BinaryFormatter is fundamentally tied to your exact implementation details, making it very hard to a: have different code at different ends (meaning: deployment is very hard and brittle - everywhere needs to change at the same time), or b: revise the implementation over time.

Frankly, I would strongly advise looking at alternative serialization tools. I'm hugely biased, but protobuf-net works very well for this type of scenario; it is still "binary" (meaning: not text), but it isn't tied to the internal implementation details. It is fast (usually much faster than BinaryFormatter), efficient (usually much less bandwidth required than BinaryFormatter), free, and is usually very easy to apply to an existing object model; it usually means going from this:

[Serializable]
public class Custom {
    public int Id {get;set;}
    public string Name {get;set;}
    // ...etc
}

to this:

[ProtoContract] // you can keep the [Serializable] for compat if you want
public class Custom {
    [ProtoMember(1)]
    public int Id {get;set;}
    [ProtoMember(2)]
    public string Name {get;set;}
    // ...etc
}

C# Serialization - Could not find the assembly

2 Answers2