Program With Dave

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Step 5: Add The Method to Serialize A Packet to a Byte Array. Now, this may only be one line of code, but it is a very important one. Our packet classes are going to serve two purposes. They will take their data and convert it all into a byte array that can be sent over the network, and they will take a byte array and convert it back into a packet object on the other side.

Every class which inherits from Packet must implement these two capabilities. This is the first one. Add the following abstract function to our Packet class definition.

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        public abstract byte[] ToByteArray();

This function, when implemented by child classes, should return a byte array which can be sent over the network.

Step 6: Add a class (static) function which will take an array of bytes and return a Packet object. This is the reverse of the function we just added. This one will take a given array of bytes and reconstruct it into a meaningful object our server can work with.

Again, each class which inherits from Packet will need to override this function, but since it’s static we have to provide the implementation for even the Packet class. It just won’t do anything. Note that a class can get away with no implementing this function, but a protocol would not really be able to do anything if it can’t interpret a stream of bytes.

Add these lines of code to our packet class.

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        public static void Parse(byte[] packetData)
        {
        }

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 9:46 pm and is filed under CSharp, Dot Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.