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Serialize an Object to XML in CSharp

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Every once in a while we all find the need to persist objects to local storage. Access databases and even SQL CE can be a bit much for such a simple task, so sometimes a small XML file will do the trick. Most recently I've used this to store different configurations that an application uses at runtime. This class uses generics so that it can serialize and deserialize any type. Here is the code:

csharpLine number Off | Hide | Select all
  1. using System;
  2. using System.Collections.Generic;
  3. using System.Text;
  4. using System.IO;
  5. using System.Xml;
  6. using System.Xml.Serialization;
  7. using System.Reflection;
  8.  
  9.  
  10.  
  11. namespace MyApp
  12. {
  13.     class XMLClassMapper<T> where T: new()
  14.     {
  15.         private XmlSerializer _serializer;
  16.         private FileStream _stream;
  17.  
  18.         public bool WriteClass(T toWrite, String fileName)
  19.         {
  20.             //FileMode.Create overwrites existing by default, be aware of this
  21.             _stream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create);
  22.  
  23.             _serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
  24.  
  25.             try
  26.             {
  27.                 _serializer.Serialize(_stream, toWrite);
  28.                 return true;
  29.             }
  30.             catch(XmlException ex)
  31.             {
  32.                 throw ex;
  33.             }
  34.             finally
  35.             {
  36.                 _stream.Close();
  37.                 _stream = null;
  38.  
  39.                 _serializer = null;
  40.             }
  41.         }
  42.  
  43.         public T ClassFromFile(string fileName)
  44.         {
  45.             T ret = new T();
  46.  
  47.             _stream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open);
  48.             _serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
  49.  
  50.             try
  51.             {
  52.                 ret = (T)_serializer.Deserialize(_stream);
  53.             }
  54.             catch(XmlException ex)
  55.             {
  56.                 throw ex;
  57.             }
  58.             finally
  59.             {
  60.                 _stream.Close();
  61.                 _stream = null;
  62.  
  63.                 _serializer = null;
  64.             }
  65.  
  66.             return ret;
  67.         }
  68.     }
  69. }


Instantiate it like

csharpLine number Off | Hide | Select all
  1. XMLClassMapper<MyType> mpr = new XMLClassMapper<MyType>();


WriteClass() saves your object to an XML file. ClassFromFile() loads your XML file into a class instance. In both cases, fileName is the full path to the file ie C:\folder\subfolder\file.xml. I hope you find this helpful.

390 Rating: 2.4/5 (14 votes cast)

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