Serializing using protobuf-net and sending as postdata in http - http

Question

I'm using Protobuf-net to try and send a serialized object to a webapplication that I'm running in another project. The Serializer.Serialize<T>() method takes a Stream (to write to) and and instance of T (in this case, a list of a few objects that I set up to work with protobuf-net)
How do I go about doing this? Do I need to write to a file or can I send the stream as postdata somehow? Below you can see I'm using a string as the postdata.
My execute post method
public static void ExecuteHttpWebPostRequest(Uri uri,string postdata, int requestTimeOut, ref string responseContent)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(uri.Host))// || !IsConnectedToInternet(uri))
return;
var httpWebReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
var bytePostData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postdata);
httpWebReq.Timeout = requestTimeOut*1000;
httpWebReq.Method = "POST";
httpWebReq.ContentLength = bytePostData.Length;
//httpWebReq.ContentType = "text/xml;charset=utf-8";
httpWebReq.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
//httpWebReq.TransferEncoding=
//httpWebReq.ContentType = "application/xml";
//httpWebReq.Accept = "application/xml";
var dataStream = httpWebReq.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(bytePostData, 0, bytePostData.Length);
dataStream.Close();
var httpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpWebReq.GetResponse();
// Get the stream associated with the response.
var receiveStream = httpWebResponse.GetResponseStream();
// Pipes the stream to a higher level stream reader with the required encoding format.
var readStream = new StreamReader(receiveStream,Encoding.Default);
responseContent = readStream.ReadToEnd();
httpWebResponse.Close();
}

Answer 1

You can just serialize to the request:
Serializer.Serialize(dataStream, obj);
And equally, you can deserialize from receiveStream, if you choose.
Note, however, that protobuf data is not text, and should not be treated as such - very bad things happen if you try that.