Serialize an object to XML

Question

I have a C# class that I have inherited. I have successfully \"built\" the object. But I need to serialize the object to XML. Is there an easy way to do it?

It looks

Answer 1

It's a little bit more complicated than calling the ToString method of the class, but not much.

Here's a simple drop-in function you can use to serialize any type of object. It returns a string containing the serialized XML contents:

public string SerializeObject(object obj)
{
    System.Xml.XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(obj.GetType());
    using (System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream()) {
        serializer.Serialize(ms, obj);
        ms.Position = 0;
        xmlDoc.Load(ms);
        return xmlDoc.InnerXml;
    }
}