How do I convert a C# class to an XMLElement or XMLDocument

Question

I have an C# class that I would like to serialize using XMLSerializer. But I would like to have it serialized to a XMLElement or XMLDocument. Is this possible or do I have to serialize it to a String and then parse the string back to a XMLDocument?

Answer 1

I had this problem too, and Matt Davis provided a great solution. Just posting some code snippets, since there are a few more details.

Serializing:

public static XmlElement SerializeToXmlElement(object o)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

    using(XmlWriter writer = doc.CreateNavigator().AppendChild())
    {
        new XmlSerializer(o.GetType()).Serialize(writer, o);
    }

    return doc.DocumentElement;
}

Deserializing:

public static T DeserializeFromXmlElement<T>(XmlElement element)
{
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));

    return (T)serializer.Deserialize(new XmlNodeReader(element));
}

Answer 2

You can create a new XmlDocument, then call CreateNavigator().AppendChild(). This will give you an XmlWriter you can pass to the Serialize method that will dump into the doc root.