XML Serialize an object to a string

Published
by
David Brown
on August 17, 2008
in Uncategorized
. Tags: , .

While working on a simple web API, I needed a way to serialize an object (using the XML serializer) to a string so I could return it as an API response. Unfortunately, there’s no Serialize() override for returning a string value. Instead, you’ll have to use a MemoryStream object and the System.Text.Encoding class.

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XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(YourObject));
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
xs.Serialize(ms, instanceOfYourObject);
Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray()));

Perhaps an extension method would be good in this case.

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public static string GetXmlString(this XmlSerializer xs, object obj) {
	MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
	xs.Serialize(ms, obj);
	return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray());
}
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XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(YourObject));
Console.WriteLine(xs.GetXmlString(instanceOfYourObject));

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