Anton Gochev’s Weblog

XmlConverter - serialize/deserialize an object to/from Xml (continue)

Few days ago I wrote about a static class named XmlConverter. It contains few generic methods which allow an object to be serialized to XML or deserialized from XML. Today, I rewrite it to a XML utility class with extension methods. The following snippet contains the new class.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.Xml;

namespace XmlConverter.Utilities
{
 public static class XmlUtils
 {
  public static string ToXml<t>(this T value)
   where T : new()
  {
   return ToXml<t>(value, Encoding.UTF8);
  }
  public static string ToXml<t>(this T value, Encoding encoding)
   where T : new()
  {
   try
   {
    using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
    {
     using (TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter(stream, encoding))
     {
      XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
      serializer.Serialize(writer, value);
      int cnt = (int)stream.Length;
      byte[] arr = new byte[cnt];
      stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
      stream.Read(arr, 0, cnt);
      return encoding.GetString(arr, 0, arr.Length).Trim();
     }
    }
   }
   catch
   {
   }
   return null;
  }
  public static T FromXml<t>(this T value, string xml)
   where T : new()
  {
   try
   {
    using (StringReader stream = new StringReader(xml))
    {
     using (XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(stream))
     {
      XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
      return (T)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
     }
    }
   }
   catch
   {
   }
   return default(T);
  }
 }
}

Contact, List<Contact> object and XML output for them are the same as those in my old post. Now an object can be serialized/deserialized in this way:

   
   // Serialize the list of Contact objects
   var listXml = list.ToXml();
   // Deserialize the list of Contact objects
   List<contact> restoredList = new List<contact>();
   restoredList = restoredList.FromXml(listXml);

   // Serialize Contact object
   var contactXml = contact.ToXml();
   // Deserialize Contact object
   Contact restoredContact = new Contact();
   restoredContact = restoredContact.FromXml(contactXml);

A using statement to extension methods class’ name space is required in order to access them.

using XmlConverter.Utilities;