C#

Save objects to the ‘LocalFolder’

IMPORTANT: You find the newest versions of TCD.Serialization on NuGet – it works with Windows Phone as well. This post will Show you how to serialize and save objects with XML to your apps LocalFolder/RoamingFolder. Metro style apps in Windows 8 have their own folders where they can store their data. These folders can be accessed by: StorageFolder localFolder = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder; StorageFolder roamingFolder = ApplicationData.Current.RoamingFolder; The difference between these two folders is that Windows 8 will synchronise the RoamingFolder between different machines. This can be useful if you want to improve the user experience, for example by synchronising drafts of a blog post between a users tablet and PC. It’s very important, that the data you want to save is serializable. When designing the data structure and classes for your data, you got to make sure, that each class has a parameterless constructor. Properties can be marked with a set…

C#

Migrating TCD to Windows 8 Release Preview

Two days ago, I migrated my laptop to Windows 8 Release Preview and today Windows Live Mesh finished syncing all of my files. So in the last few hours I migrated all the dev stuff and I’d like to share the latest versions of them too. Most of the libraries haven’t changed that much, only their namespaces have changed from TCD.Windows8.xxxx to TCD.xxxx. TCD.Serialization TCD.Serialization.Xml.XmlDeSerializer – (de)serialize an object from/to a string or Stream using XML TCD.Serialization.Json.JsonDeSerializer – (de)serialize an object from/to a string or Stream using JSON Download TCD.Serialization.zip TCD.Controls TCD.Controls.Flyout – create your own Flyout TCD.Controls.Settings.SettingsContractWrapper – integrate with the settings contract in just a few lines of code Download FlyoutAndSettingsSample.zip

C#

XML and JSON (De)Serialization in WinRT and Windows Phone

In some of my recent Metro/WinRT projects I had to save data to the disk. I decided to go for Xml-serialzation, because it’s human-readable, and flexible. Also it was perfect for the data I wanted to save (eg. metadata about a movie). (If you want to do it on your own: System.IO and System.Xml.Serialization are the namespaces you need for XML (de)serialization.) As I needed this in many projects, I composed a small library, containing a TCD.Serialization.XmlDeSerializer as well as a TCD.Serialization.JsonDeSerializer. Both have four static methods to serialize to/from Stream and string. You can download a package with the sources and a ready-to-use dll. TCD.Serialzation is available on NuGet it works with Windows Phone as well. NOTE: the methods aren’t fail-safe, so you might need to try{}catch{} them to handle exceptions. (For example if you want to serialize to a FileStream without write permission.) Have fun and let me hear…