I’m going to be writing some networking code for a personal project, so I spent some time learning to use TcpClient\/TcpListener. After starting to learn them, I thought it might be interesting if I could send a delegate across the wire.<\/p>\n
Since I wasn’t quite sure what I’d be sending and receiving when I started learning how to use the TcpClient class, I decided that I would use BinaryFormatter to serialize all of my messages. This meant that I could easily create a class that contained everything I wanted to send. This is where I started my experiment:<\/p>\n
[Serializable]<\/pre>\npublic<\/span> class<\/span> InfoToSend<\/pre>\n{<\/pre>\n public<\/span> string<\/span> Message<\/pre>\n { get; set; }<\/pre>\n <\/pre>\n public<\/span> delegate<\/span> void<\/span> MessageParse(string<\/span> text);<\/pre>\n public<\/span> MessageParse MessageParsingMethod<\/pre>\n { get; set; }<\/pre>\n}<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIn my first attempt, I set MessageParsingMethod to a method that was in the WinForm I am using as a GUI for the project. This threw an exception that came from an unintended consequence of trying to serialize a delegate: it also tried to serialize my form, which isn’t serializable.<\/p>\n
To get around this limitation, I created a new class that didn’t do exactly what I wanted, but allowed me to demonstrate sending a delegate:<\/p>\n
\n\n[Serializable]<\/pre>\npublic<\/span> class<\/span> ShowMessageBox<\/pre>\n{<\/pre>\n public<\/span> void<\/span> YesNo(string<\/span> message)<\/pre>\n { MessageBox.Show(message, \"\"<\/span>, MessageBoxButtons.YesNo); }<\/pre>\n <\/pre>\n public<\/span> void<\/span> Ok(string<\/span> message)<\/pre>\n { MessageBox.Show(message); }<\/pre>\n}<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSetting the MessageParsingMethod in InfoToSend to one of these two methods worked like a charm. The message was sent, and the proper method was called in the receiving instance of the program.<\/p>\n
While my experiment worked, it has quite a large limitation: the class that contains any method I want to call must be serializable, and the serialized data of that class will be sent across the wire. This could seriously bloat the amount of data being sent.<\/p>\n
My next step is to clone my learning project in WCF to figure out the differences between the two and the merits of each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m going to be writing some networking code for a personal project, so I spent some time learning to use TcpClient\/TcpListener. After starting to learn them, I thought it might be interesting if I could send a delegate across the … Continue reading