Shows how to use the Apache Avro serializer very easily. It assumes that 1) you have already defined the Avro DTO objects in the Avro IDL 2) You've run those IDL files into the code-generator to create your C# classes 3) You've added these code-gen'd Avro classes to your Visual Studio Project

SerializerAvro

// Copyright 2013, Sid Shetye
// 
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
// 
//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
// 
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
    
using System.IO;
using Avro.IO;
using Avro.Specific;

namespace ExampleForAvro
{
    public static class SerializerAvro
    {
        public static byte[] Serialize<T>(T thisObj) where T : ISpecificRecord
        {
            using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
            {
                var enc = new BinaryEncoder(ms);
                var writer = new SpecificDefaultWriter(thisObj.Schema); // Schema comes from pre-compiled, code-gen phase
                writer.Write(thisObj, enc);
                return ms.ToArray();
            }
        }

        public static T Deserialize<T>(byte[] bytes) where T : ISpecificRecord, new()
        {
            using (var ms = new MemoryStream(bytes))
            {
                var dec = new BinaryDecoder(ms);
                var regenObj = new T();

                var reader = new SpecificDefaultReader(regenObj.Schema, regenObj.Schema);                
                reader.Read(regenObj, dec);
                return regenObj;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Same as the deserialize method above but we allow called to provider an existing
        /// Avro DTO object that can be reused across calls to avoid new'ing an object
        /// for each call (for high performance situations)
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
        /// <param name="bytes"></param>
        /// <param name="regenObj"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static T DeserializeReuseObject<T>(byte[] bytes, T regenObj) where T : ISpecificRecord
        {
            using (var ms = new MemoryStream(bytes))
            {
                var dec = new BinaryDecoder(ms);
                
                var reader = new SpecificDefaultReader(regenObj.Schema, regenObj.Schema);
                reader.Read(regenObj, dec);
                return regenObj;
            }
        }
    }
}