Arbitrary Object Serialization/Deserialization

I frequently need to store and retrieve object state. I’ve found the .NET Framework’s XmlSerializer invaluable in this capacity. To make my life even easier, I’ve come up with a pair of functions that serialize and deserialize an arbitrary object to an XML file.

I’ve stripped out comments, exception handling, etc. for brevity’s sake.

public void Serialize(object obj, string path)

{

XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType());

XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(path, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);

writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

ser.Serialize(writer, obj);

writer.Close();

}

public object Deserialize(Type type, string path)

{

object obj = null;

XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type);

XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(path);

obj = ser.Deserialize(reader);

reader.Close();

return obj;

}

One noteworthy caveat to this technique is that XmlSerializer will only serialize public instance fields and public properties with both get and set defined.

Example C# usage:

public class Address

{

public string Name;

public string Line1;

public string City;

public string State;

public string Zip;

}



Address a = new Address();

a.Name = "John Doe";

a.Line1 = "123 Main St.";

a.City = "Anytown";

a.State = "NY";

a.Zip = "10900";



Serialize(a, @"c:tempaddress.xml");



Address a = Deserialize(typeof(Address), @"c:tempaddress.xml") as Address;

Notice I use the “as” keyword instead of casting. I prefer to use this form since it yields null on conversion failure instead of raising a NullReferenceException.

The resulting XML from the above example looks like:

<p>
  <?xml version=&#8221;1.0&#8243; encoding=&#8221;utf-8&#8243;?>
</p>

<p>
  <Address xmlns:xsd=&#8221;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema&#8221; xmlns:xsi=&#8221;http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance&#8221;>
</p>

<p>
  <Name>John Doe</Name>
</p>

<p>
  <Line1>123 Main St.</Line1>
</p>

<p>
  <City>Anytown</City>
</p>

<p>
  <State>NY</State>
</p>

<p>
  <Zip>10900</Zip>
</p>

<p>
  </Address>
</p>

<p>
  </span>
</p>

<p>
  This stuff gets pretty interesting when dealing with complex object graphs.
</p>