Custom serialization in Caliburn.Micro 1.1

Question

I'm upgrading a 1.0 WP7 application to CM 1.1. Among other stuff, I'm removing the old attribute-based tombstoning and implementing storage classes.

This typically involves creating a class for each VM for storage purposes, deriving it from StorageHandler<T> (where T is the type of the VM) and overriding its Configure method like e.g.:

public override void Configure()
{
  Property(x => x.SomeSerializableProperty).InPhoneState().RestoreAfterViewLoad();
  // ...
}

In this context, how can I implement a custom serialization mechanism using my own serialize/deserialize code for objects which could not be automatically serialized? For instance, one of my VM's has a StrokeCollection property and I'd like to serialize the strokes in it, but to this end I need to replace the default mechanism which would raise security exceptions.

Could anyone show a fake CM WP7 sample to illustrate how to customize the serialization of some property, so that I can place my own code for serializing/deserializing it? Thanks!

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 23 '11 at 16:17

I don't know if this is the right path, but it works; here is a code sample:

Property(x => x.Strokes).InPhoneState().RestoreAfterViewReady().Configure(x =>
{
    x.Save = SaveStrokes;
    x.Restore = RestoreStrokes;
});

with their implementations like:

void SaveStrokes(BoardViewModel vm, Func<string> serialize, StorageMode nMode)
{
  IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings[vm.DisplayName + "ThePropertyKey"] = 
  // ...get data from vm and serialize
}

and conversely:

void RestoreStrokes(BoardViewModel vm, Func<string> serialize, StorageMode nMode)
{
  // use IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings[vm.DisplayName + "ThePropertyKey"] 
  // to check if the key exists, and if it is there get the serialized data and deserialize
}

As for strokes, I'm using my own serialization class as my usual tool for this purpose (SharpSerializer) seems having issues in restoring (it throws an ambiguous match reflection exception).

Custom serialization in Caliburn.Micro 1.1

1 Answers1