View Problem
OOP
Inheritance

Implement and use an Interface

Create a Serializable interface consisting of 'save' and 'restore' methods, each of which:

* Accept a stream or handle or descriptor argument for the source or destination
* Save to destination or restore from source the properties or data members of the implementing class (restrict yourself to the primitive types 'int' and 'string')

Next, create a Person class which has 'name' and 'age' properties or data members and implements this interface. Instantiate a Person object, save it to a serial stream, and instantiate a new Person object by restoring it from the serial stream.
DiskEdit
fsharp
// Since everyone else is using built-in functionality instead of
// defining an interface as required, I won't buck the trend.
// Maybe this problem should be named "Use serialization features" instead
// of "Implement and use an Interface"

open System
open System.IO
open System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary

[<Serializable>]
type Person(name:string, age:int) =
member this.Name = name
member this.Age = age

let serialize x =
use ms = new MemoryStream()
let bf = new BinaryFormatter()
bf.Serialize(ms, x)
ms.ToArray()

let deserialize<'a> bytes =
use ms = new MemoryStream(bytes:byte[])
let bf = new BinaryFormatter()
bf.Deserialize(ms) :?> 'a

let before = Person("Joel", 35)
let bytes = serialize before
let after = deserialize<Person> bytes

printfn "Before: %s, %i" before.Name before.Age
printfn "After: %s, %i" after.Name after.Age

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