What is a formatter?

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What is a formatter? ..

Answer / rajeshree

A formatter is used to determine the serialization format
for objectobjects. All formatters expose an interface
called the IFormatter interface. Two formatters inherit
from the IFormatter interface and are provided as part of
the .NET framework. These are the Binary formatter and the
SOAP formatter.

The Binary Formatter
The Binary formatter provides binary encoding for compact
serialization either for storage or for socket-based
network streams. The BinaryFormatter class is generally not
appropriate when data is meant to be passed through a
firewall.

The SOAP Formatter
The SOAP formatter provides formatting that can be used to
enable objects to be serialized using the SOAP protocol.
The Soap Formatter class is primarily used for
serialization through firewalls or among diverse systems.

Other Formatters
The .NET framework also includes the abstract FORMATTERS
class that can be used as a base class for custom
formatters. This class inherits from the IFormatter
interface.