Can I Serialize XML straight to a string instead of a Stream with C#?

Question

This example uses a StringWriter to hold the serialized data, then calling ToString() gives the actual string value:

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Answer 1

More or less your same solution, just using an extension method:

static class XmlExtensions {

    // serialize an object to an XML string
    public static string ToXml(this object obj) {
        // remove the default namespaces
        XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
        ns.Add(string.Empty, string.Empty);
        // serialize to string
        XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType());
        StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
        xs.Serialize(sw, obj, ns);
        return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
    }

}

[XmlType("Element")]
public class Element {
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string name;
}

class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
        Element el = new Element();
        el.name = "test";
        Console.WriteLine(el.ToXml());
    }
}