You have two options here:
Option 1: Implement ISerializable
and Snapshot to PNG
What you must do here is have all classes that contain your BitmapImage
implement the ISerializable
interface, then, in GetObjectData
, return a byte array representing an encoding of the image, for instance PNG. Then in the deserialization constructor decode the PNG to a new BitmapImage
.
Note that this snapshots the image and thus may lose some WPF data.
Since you may have multiple classes that contain a BitmapImage
, the easiest way to do this is to introduce some wrapper struct with an implicit conversion from and to BitmapImage
, like so:
[Serializable]
public struct SerializableBitmapImageWrapper : ISerializable
{
readonly BitmapImage bitmapImage;
public static implicit operator BitmapImage(SerializableBitmapImageWrapper wrapper)
{
return wrapper.BitmapImage;
}
public static implicit operator SerializableBitmapImageWrapper(BitmapImage bitmapImage)
{
return new SerializableBitmapImageWrapper(bitmapImage);
}
public BitmapImage BitmapImage { get { return bitmapImage; } }
public SerializableBitmapImageWrapper(BitmapImage bitmapImage)
{
this.bitmapImage = bitmapImage;
}
public SerializableBitmapImageWrapper(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
byte[] imageBytes = (byte[])info.GetValue("image", typeof(byte[]));
if (imageBytes == null)
bitmapImage = null;
else
{
using (var ms = new MemoryStream(imageBytes))
{
var bitmap = new BitmapImage();
bitmap.BeginInit();
bitmap.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;
bitmap.StreamSource = ms;
bitmap.EndInit();
bitmapImage = bitmap;
}
}
}
#region ISerializable Members
void ISerializable.GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
byte [] imageBytes;
if (bitmapImage == null)
imageBytes = null;
else
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
BitmapImage.SaveToPng(ms);
imageBytes = ms.ToArray();
}
info.AddValue("image", imageBytes);
}
#endregion
}
public static class BitmapHelper
{
public static void SaveToPng(this BitmapSource bitmap, Stream stream)
{
var encoder = new PngBitmapEncoder();
SaveUsingEncoder(bitmap, stream, encoder);
}
public static void SaveUsingEncoder(this BitmapSource bitmap, Stream stream, BitmapEncoder encoder)
{
BitmapFrame frame = BitmapFrame.Create(bitmap);
encoder.Frames.Add(frame);
encoder.Save(stream);
}
public static BitmapImage FromUri(string path)
{
var bitmap = new BitmapImage();
bitmap.BeginInit();
bitmap.UriSource = new Uri(path);
bitmap.EndInit();
return bitmap;
}
}
Then use it as follows:
[Serializable]
public class MyClass
{
SerializableBitmapImageWrapper testImage;
public string TestString { get; set; }
public BitmapImage TestImage { get { return testImage; } set { testImage = value; } }
}
public static class GenericCopier
{
public static T DeepCopy<T>(T objectToCopy)
{
using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
BinaryFormatter binaryFormatter = new BinaryFormatter();
binaryFormatter.Serialize(memoryStream, objectToCopy);
memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
return (T)binaryFormatter.Deserialize(memoryStream);
}
}
}
Option 2: Use Serialization Surrogates to Clone the BitmapImage
Directly
It turns out that BitmapImage
has a Clone()
method, so it is reasonable to ask: is it somehow possible to override binary serialization to replace the original with a clone, without actually serializing it? Doing so would avoid the potential data loss of snapshotting to PNG and would thus appear preferable.
In fact, this is possible using serialization surrogates to replace the bitmap images with an IObjectReference
proxy containing an ID of a cloned copy created by the surrogate.
public static class GenericCopier
{
public static T DeepCopy<T>(T objectToCopy)
{
var selector = new SurrogateSelector();
var imageSurrogate = new BitmapImageCloneSurrogate();
imageSurrogate.Register(selector);
BinaryFormatter binaryFormatter = new BinaryFormatter(selector, new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.Clone));
using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
binaryFormatter.Serialize(memoryStream, objectToCopy);
memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
return (T)binaryFormatter.Deserialize(memoryStream);
}
}
}
class CloneWrapper<T> : IObjectReference
{
public T Clone { get; set; }
#region IObjectReference Members
object IObjectReference.GetRealObject(StreamingContext context)
{
return Clone;
}
#endregion
}
public abstract class CloneSurrogate<T> : ISerializationSurrogate where T : class
{
readonly Dictionary<T, long> OriginalToId = new Dictionary<T, long>();
readonly Dictionary<long, T> IdToClone = new Dictionary<long, T>();
public void Register(SurrogateSelector selector)
{
foreach (var type in Types)
selector.AddSurrogate(type, new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.Clone), this);
}
IEnumerable<Type> Types
{
get
{
yield return typeof(T);
yield return typeof(CloneWrapper<T>);
}
}
protected abstract T Clone(T original);
#region ISerializationSurrogate Members
public void GetObjectData(object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
var original = (T)obj;
long cloneId;
if (original == null)
{
cloneId = -1;
}
else
{
if (!OriginalToId.TryGetValue(original, out cloneId))
{
Debug.Assert(OriginalToId.Count == IdToClone.Count);
cloneId = OriginalToId.Count;
OriginalToId[original] = cloneId;
IdToClone[cloneId] = Clone(original);
}
}
info.AddValue("cloneId", cloneId);
info.SetType(typeof(CloneWrapper<T>));
}
public object SetObjectData(object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector)
{
var wrapper = (CloneWrapper<T>)obj;
var cloneId = info.GetInt64("cloneId");
if (cloneId != -1)
wrapper.Clone = IdToClone[cloneId];
return wrapper;
}
#endregion
}
public sealed class BitmapImageCloneSurrogate : CloneSurrogate<BitmapImage>
{
protected override BitmapImage Clone(BitmapImage original)
{
return original == null ? null : original.Clone();
}
}
In this implementation, your main classes remain unchanged:
[Serializable]
public class MyClass
{
BitmapImage testImage;
public string TestString { get; set; }
public BitmapImage TestImage { get { return testImage; } set { testImage = value; } }
}
Awkwardly, while BitmapImage
has a Clone
method, it does not actually implement the ICloneable
interface. If it had, the code above could look cleaner, because we could simply clone every cloneable object rather than calling a specific method for BitmapImage
.