End of Stream encountered before parsing was completed?

Question

I am trying to deserialize a stream but I always get this error "End of Stream encountered before parsing was completed"?

Here is the code:

        //Some code here
        BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();
        return (myObject)b.Deserialize(s);//s---> is a Stream object that has been fill up with data some line over here

Any one have ideas?

Pulvinate

In addition to the stream position issues pointed out below, another reason this can happen is because your app exits before a large file is written to disk (if you are serializing a large amount of data to a file stream). To fix this, you need to implement a blocking wait until the file is fully written like in this post: #10982604 – Rarebit

For me removing saved data file from "C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\LocalLow\" fixed it because the problem was that I changed data models after saving the file which made the model of the existing data in file different and made it throw errors while deserializing it. Hope it helps. – Crackerjack

Answer 1

Try to set the position to 0 of your stream and do not use your object but the object type.

        BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();
        s.Position = 0;
        return (YourObjectType)b.Deserialize(s);

Cardenas

Hi, I've same issue here, but after inserting s.Position =0; I get "Stream does not support seeking" – Gavette

Answer 2

Make sure the serialization completed, and that the serialization type matches the de-serialization type (i.e., make sure you're serializing with a BinaryFormatter if you're de-serializing with one). Also, make sure that the stream you serialized to really finished serializing, with a Stream.Flush() or something to that effect.

Bejewel

Answer 3

I had the same exception thrown, until I added the [Serializable] tag to the class I was Serializing :)

Then it all worked perfectly.

Ovine

this was exactly my problem – Quiles

That was my problem too. My serialized class was referencing another class that didn't have the serializable tag. – Ideograph

Answer 4

In my case I used:

stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

after i serialized the stream, and before i deserialized the stream works charm. hope this helps!

Dolphin

Answer 5

I have spent 5 hourse and have got end of stream error and lost data (Not obvious feature in GzipStream: you should use underlying stream only after flush GzipStream).

Full example of working code:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.IO.Compression;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

namespace ConsoleApp3
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string large = LargeJsonContent.GetBigObject();
            string base64;

            using (var readStream = new MemoryStream())
            using (var writeStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                using (GZipStream compressor = new GZipStream(writeStream, CompressionMode.Compress, true)) //pay attention to leaveOpen = true
                {
                    var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
                    formatter.Serialize(readStream, large);

                    Console.WriteLine($"After binary serialization of JsonString: {readStream.Length} bytes");

                    readStream.Position = 0;
                    readStream.CopyTo(compressor);
                }

                Console.WriteLine($"Compressed stream size: {writeStream.Length} bytes");

                writeStream.Position = 0;
                byte[] writeBytes = writeStream.ToArray();
                base64 = Convert.ToBase64String(writeBytes);
            }


            ////

            using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
                formatter.Serialize(stream, base64);
                Console.WriteLine($"Size of base64: {stream.Length} bytes");
            }

            Console.WriteLine("---------------------");
            ////

            string large2;

            var bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(base64);
            using (var readStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                readStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
                readStream.Position = 0;
                Console.WriteLine($"Compressed stream size: {readStream.Length} bytes");
                using (var writeStream = new MemoryStream())
                {
                    using (GZipStream decompressor = new GZipStream(readStream, CompressionMode.Decompress, true)) //pay attention to leaveOpen = true
                    {
                        decompressor.CopyTo(writeStream);
                        writeStream.Position = 0;
                    }

                    var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
                    large2 = (string)formatter.Deserialize(writeStream);
                }
            }

            Console.WriteLine(large == large2);
            Console.WriteLine($"large:{large.Length} | large2:{large2.Length}");
        }
    }
}

Indeed

Answer 6

Check in your sender code if you are not doing the following

NetworkStream strm = client.GetStream(); // the stream
formatter.Serialize(strm, status); // the serialization process
strm.Close();// Remove this code, this was the culprit in my case

Drescher

Answer 7

the class which you created must has [Serializable].

Kaminsky

This is a duplicate answer; it is the same guidance as @Ovine offered five years ago. Please be sure to review all existing answers before contributing a new one. Later, once you have a bit more reputation, you'll be able to validate existing answers by upvoting them. – Sheldonshelduck

Answer 8

I had the same problem. If the class I was serializing had other custom objects in it, I had to make sure that those custom objects were [Serializable] too to make the binary formatter serialize/deserialize work without this error.

Unorganized