Serialize an object to XElement and Deserialize it in memory

Question

I want to serialize an object to XML, but I don't want to save it on the disk. I want to hold it in a XElement variable (for using with LINQ), and then Deserialize back to my object.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use these two extension methods to serialize and deserialize between XElement and your objects.

public static XElement ToXElement<T>(this object obj) {     using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())     {         using (TextWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(memoryStream))         {             var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));             xmlSerializer.Serialize(streamWriter, obj);             return XElement.Parse(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray()));         }     } }  public static T FromXElement<T>(this XElement xElement) {         var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));         return (T)xmlSerializer.Deserialize(xElement.CreateReader()); } 

USAGE

XElement element = myClass.ToXElement<MyClass>(); var newMyClass = element.FromXElement<MyClass>();