1. Creating Sequential-Access File  Serializable attribute indicates to the compiler that objects of a class can be serialized– written to or read from a stream as objects.  Objects that we wish to write to or read from a stream must include this attribute in their class definition  Attributes are identifiers ( within square brackets ) that specify additional information in a declaration.  The code that defines an attribute is applied at runtime.

2. Record public __gc class Record { [Serializable] private: int account; String* firstname; String *lastname; double balance; public: ……. };

3. Open a file  We can open files for manipulation by creating objects of classes FileStream.  FileStream constructor can receive three arguments –A String * containing the name of the file to be opened –A constant describing how to open the file –A constant describing the file permission FileStream *output = new FileStream( filename, FileMode::OpenOrCreate, FileAccess::Write);

4. Write record to FileStream (serialize object)  private: static BinaryFormatter *format = new BinaryFormatter();  format->Serialize(output, record);  Output is FileStream object  record is a Record object  Record record;

5. SaveFileDialog  Create dialog box enabling user to save file SaveFileDialog *filechooser = new SaveFileDialog();  Windows::Forms::DialogResult res = filechooser->ShowDialog();  Get specified file name  String *filename = filechooser->FileName;

6. OpenFileDialog  Create dialog box enabling user to open file  OpenFileDialog *filechooser = new OpenFileDialog();  Windows::Forms::DialogResult res = filechooser- >ShowDialog();  Exit event if clicked cancel  If( res == DialogResult::Cancel) return;  Get specified file name  String *filename = filechooser->FileName;

7. Read from file  Create FileStream to obtain read access to file  private: FileStream *input;  private: static BinaryFormatter *reader = new BinaryFormatter();  input = new FileStream(filename, FileMode::Open, FileAccess::Read);

8. Deserialize record and store data in TextBoxes  try{  Record *record = dynamic_cast (reader->Deserialize(input) );  String *values[] = {  record-> Account.ToString(),  record->LastName->ToString(),  record->FirstName->ToString(),  record->Balance.ToString()};  };  SaveTextBox(values);  }

9.  catch( SerializationException *)  {  input->close();  …  }