Using DataContractSerializer to serialize, but can't deserialize back

Question

I have the following 2 functions:

public static string Serialize(object obj)
{
    DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
    MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
    serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, obj);
    return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.GetBuffer());
}

public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType)
{
    MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml));
   // memoryStream.Position = 0L;
    XmlDictionaryReader reader = XmlDictionaryReader.CreateTextReader(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8, new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas(), null);
    DataContractSerializer dataContractSerializer = new DataContractSerializer(toType);
    return dataContractSerializer.ReadObject(reader);
}

The first one seems to serialize an object to an xml string just fine. The XML appears valid, no broken tags, no white spaces at the beginning or at the end, etc. Now the second function doesn't want to deserialize my xml string back to the object. On the last line I get:

There was an error deserializing the object of type [MY OBJECT TYPE HERE]. The data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.

What am I doing wrong? I tried rewriting the Deserialize function a few times, and it always seems to be the same kind of error. Thank you!

Oh, and this is how I'm calling the 2 functions:

SomeObject so = new SomeObject();
string temp = SerializationManager.Serialize(so);
so = (SomeObject)SerializationManager.Deserialize(temp, typeof(SomeObject));

Answer 1

Here is how I've always done it:

    public static string Serialize(object obj) {
        using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
        using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(memoryStream)) {
            DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
            serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, obj);
            memoryStream.Position = 0;
            return reader.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }

    public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType) {
        using(Stream stream = new MemoryStream()) {
            byte[] data = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
            stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
            stream.Position = 0;
            DataContractSerializer deserializer = new DataContractSerializer(toType);
            return deserializer.ReadObject(stream);
        }
    }

Answer 2

Other solution is:

public static T Deserialize<T>(string rawXml)
{
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(rawXml)))
    {
        DataContractSerializer formatter0 = 
            new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
        return (T)formatter0.ReadObject(reader);
    }
}

One remark: sometimes it happens that raw xml contains e.g.:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

then of course you can't use UTF8 encoding used in other examples..

Answer 3

I ended up doing the following and it works.

public static string Serialize(object obj)
{
    using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
        serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, obj);
        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
    }
}

public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType)
{
    using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml)))
    {
        XmlDictionaryReader reader = XmlDictionaryReader.CreateTextReader(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8, new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas(), null);
        DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(toType);
        return serializer.ReadObject(reader);
    }
}

It seems that the major problem was in the Serialize function when calling stream.GetBuffer(). Calling stream.ToArray() appears to work.

Answer 4

This best for XML Deserialize

 public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType)
    {

        using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml)))
        {
            System.IO.StreamReader str = new System.IO.StreamReader(memoryStream);
            System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer xSerializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(toType);
            return xSerializer.Deserialize(str);
        }

    }