How to serialize/deserialize simple classes to XML and back

Question

Sometimes I want to emulate stored data of my classes without setting up a round trip to the database. For example, let's say I have the following classes:

public class ShoppingCart {     public List<CartItem> Items {get; set;}     public int UserID { get; set; } }  public class CartItem {     public int SkuID { get; set; }     public int Quantity  { get; set; }     public double ExtendedCost  { get; set; } } 

Let's say I build a ShoppingCart object in memory and want to "save" it as an XML document. Is this possible via some kind of XDocument.CreateFromPOCO(shoppingCart) method? How about in the other direction: is there a built-in way to create a ShoppingCart object from an XML document like new ShoppingCart(xDoc)?

Answer 1

XmlSerializer is one way to do it. DataContractSerializer is another. Example with XmlSerializer:

using System.Xml; using System.Xml.Serialization;  //...  ShoppingCart shoppingCart = FetchShoppingCartFromSomewhere(); var serializer = new XmlSerializer(shoppingCart.GetType()); using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create("shoppingcart.xml")) {     serializer.Serialize(writer, shoppingCart); } 

and to deserialize it back:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ShoppingCart)); using (var reader = XmlReader.Create("shoppingcart.xml")) {     var shoppingCart = (ShoppingCart)serializer.Deserialize(reader); } 

Also for better encapsulation I would recommend you using properties instead of fields in your CartItem class.