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How to: chunk serialized data

Warning

Binary serialization with BinaryFormatter can be dangerous. For more information, see the BinaryFormatter security guide and the BinaryFormatter migration guide.

Two issues that occur when sending large data sets in Web service messages are:

  1. A large working set (memory) due to buffering by the serialization engine.

  2. Inordinate bandwidth consumption due to 33 percent inflation after Base64 encoding.

To solve these problems, implement the IXmlSerializable interface to control the serialization and deserialization. Specifically, implement the WriteXml and ReadXml methods to chunk the data.

To implement server-side chunking

  1. On the server machine, the Web method must turn off ASP.NET buffering and return a type that implements IXmlSerializable.

  2. The type that implements IXmlSerializable chunks the data in the WriteXml method.

To implement client-side processing

  1. Alter the Web method on the client proxy to return the type that implements IXmlSerializable. You can use a SchemaImporterExtension to do this automatically, but this isn't shown here.

  2. Implement the ReadXml method to read the chunked data stream and write the bytes to disk. This implementation also raises progress events that can be used by a graphic control, such as a progress bar.

Example

The following code example shows the Web method on the client that turns off ASP.NET buffering. It also shows the client-side implementation of the IXmlSerializable interface that chunks the data in the WriteXml method.

C#
[WebMethod]
[SoapDocumentMethod(ParameterStyle = SoapParameterStyle.Bare)]
public SongStream DownloadSong(DownloadAuthorization Authorization, string filePath)
{
    // Turn off response buffering.
    System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Buffer = false;
    // Return a song.
    SongStream song = new SongStream(filePath);
    return song;
}
C#
[XmlSchemaProvider("MySchema")]
public class SongStream : IXmlSerializable
{
    private const string ns = "http://demos.Contoso.com/webservices";
    private string filePath;

    public SongStream() { }

    public SongStream(string filePath)
    {
        this.filePath = filePath;
    }

    // This is the method named by the XmlSchemaProviderAttribute applied to the type.
    public static XmlQualifiedName MySchema(XmlSchemaSet xs)
    {
        // This method is called by the framework to get the schema for this type.
        // We return an existing schema from disk.

        XmlSerializer schemaSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(XmlSchema));
        string xsdPath = null;
        // NOTE: replace the string with your own path.
        xsdPath = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("SongStream.xsd");
        XmlSchema s = (XmlSchema)schemaSerializer.Deserialize(
            new XmlTextReader(xsdPath), null);
        xs.XmlResolver = new XmlUrlResolver();
        xs.Add(s);

        return new XmlQualifiedName("songStream", ns);
    }

    void IXmlSerializable.WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer)
    {
        // This is the chunking code.
        // ASP.NET buffering must be turned off for this to work.

        int bufferSize = 4096;
        char[] songBytes = new char[bufferSize];
        FileStream inFile = File.Open(this.filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

        long length = inFile.Length;

        // Write the file name.
        writer.WriteElementString("fileName", ns, Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(this.filePath));

        // Write the size.
        writer.WriteElementString("size", ns, length.ToString());

        // Write the song bytes.
        writer.WriteStartElement("song", ns);

        StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(inFile, true);
        int readLen = sr.Read(songBytes, 0, bufferSize);

        while (readLen > 0)
        {
            writer.WriteStartElement("chunk", ns);
            writer.WriteChars(songBytes, 0, readLen);
            writer.WriteEndElement();

            writer.Flush();
            readLen = sr.Read(songBytes, 0, bufferSize);
        }

        writer.WriteEndElement();
        inFile.Close();
    }

    XmlSchema IXmlSerializable.GetSchema()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    void IXmlSerializable.ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}
C#
public class SongFile : IXmlSerializable
{
    public static event ProgressMade OnProgress;

    public SongFile()
    { }

    private const string ns = "http://demos.teched2004.com/webservices";
    public static string MusicPath;
    private string filePath;
    private double size;

    void IXmlSerializable.ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader)
    {
        reader.ReadStartElement("DownloadSongResult", ns);
        ReadFileName(reader);
        ReadSongSize(reader);
        ReadAndSaveSong(reader);
        reader.ReadEndElement();
    }

    void ReadFileName(XmlReader reader)
    {
        string fileName = reader.ReadElementString("fileName", ns);
        this.filePath =
            Path.Combine(MusicPath, Path.ChangeExtension(fileName, ".mp3"));
    }

    void ReadSongSize(XmlReader reader)
    {
        this.size = Convert.ToDouble(reader.ReadElementString("size", ns));
    }

    void ReadAndSaveSong(XmlReader reader)
    {
        FileStream outFile = File.Open(
            this.filePath, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write);

        string songBase64;
        byte[] songBytes;
        reader.ReadStartElement("song", ns);
        double totalRead = 0;
        while (true)
        {
            if (reader.IsStartElement("chunk", ns))
            {
                songBase64 = reader.ReadElementString();
                totalRead += songBase64.Length;
                songBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(songBase64);
                outFile.Write(songBytes, 0, songBytes.Length);
                outFile.Flush();

                if (OnProgress != null)
                {
                    OnProgress(100 * (totalRead / size));
                }
            }

            else
            {
                break;
            }
        }

        outFile.Close();
        reader.ReadEndElement();
    }

    public void Play()
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(this.filePath);
    }

    XmlSchema IXmlSerializable.GetSchema()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}

Compiling the code

See also