Blog Post

• Posted by:
• Richard Lee
• 7 comments
• 

I was doing my now and again constructing on the fly class libraries :), and while this doesn't save time it sure does help in refining some previously pretty badly written code and smash some ill-conceived ideas.

Here is an XML serialization helper class that will serialize & deserialize any object that abides by the XML serialization rules in .NET. Don't forget to check out Saving objects as XML to cookies using the Serialization Helper class article.

Usings

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

XmlSerializationHelper class

/// <summary>
/// Performs XML serialization & deserialization
/// on objects that satisfy the XML serialization
/// requirements. Intended to be high performing
/// without going overboard.
/// </summary>
public static class XmlSerializerHelper
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Maintains a list of XML formatters
	/// </summary>
	private static readonly Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer> XmlFormatter;

	static XmlSerializerHelper()
	{
		XmlFormatter = new Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer>();
	}

	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the formatter for the specified type. If
	/// the formatter is not available it is created.
	/// </summary>
	private static XmlSerializer GetFormatter(Type objType)
	{
		if (!XmlFormatter.ContainsKey(objType))
			XmlFormatter.Add(objType, new XmlSerializer(objType));
		return XmlFormatter[objType];
	}

	/// <summary>
	/// Serializes the object to XML
	/// </summary>
	public static string ToXml<T>(T obj)
		where T : new()
	{
		using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
		{
			GetFormatter(obj.GetType()).Serialize(sw, obj);
			return sw.ToString();
		}
	}

	/// <summary>
	/// Deserializes the object from XML
	/// </summary>
	public static T FromXml<T>(string objectAsXml)
		where T : new()
	{
		if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(objectAsXml))
		{
			using (StringReader sr = new StringReader(objectAsXml))
			{
				return (T) GetFormatter(typeof(T)).Deserialize(sr);
			}
		}

		return default(T);
	}
}

This boils down to a short, simple and sweet XML serialization helper class. Here is an example of this class in action, Saving objects as XML to cookies using the Serialization Helper class.