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:

Person john = new Person(); XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person)); StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(); xmlSerializer.Serialize(stringWriter, john); string serializedXML = stringWriter.ToString(); 

Is there any easier/Cleaner way to do this? All of the Serialize() overloads seem to use a Stream or Writer.

UPDATE: Asked a similar question about serializing an IEnumerable via an Extension Method .

Answer 1

Fun with extension methods...

var ret = john.ToXmlString() 

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public static class XmlTools {     public static string ToXmlString<T>(this T input)     {         using (var writer = new StringWriter())         {             input.ToXml(writer);             return writer.ToString();         }     }     public static void ToXml<T>(this T objectToSerialize, Stream stream)     {         new XmlSerializer(typeof(T)).Serialize(stream, objectToSerialize);     }      public static void ToXml<T>(this T objectToSerialize, StringWriter writer)     {         new XmlSerializer(typeof(T)).Serialize(writer, objectToSerialize);     } } 

Answer 2

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());     } }