Object to XML Serialization in .NET

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Posted on 15/08/200916/08/2009
Posted in Coding & Development
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Object to XML Serialization in .NET

Hi all.

Today I read a topic related to XML, Serializing and Deserializing object, I enjoyed it because it provides an awesome way to convert objects (like classes) to XML. Before today, I used for loops and tags to build XML file, which needs alot of time and takes much of work when I need to modify the XML.

In this post, I will make a simple example to introduce this issue, I’ll use C#, if you need any help in VB.NET please send to me.

I will not talk about XML, I suppose you know whats the benefits and drawbacks of XML, but I will mention two important things when you need to serialize class to XML:

XML serialization can serialize only public data. You cannot serialize private data
You cannot serialize object graphs; you can use XML serialization only on objects.

The following example is about Person class with some public variables, one of the is an enumerator; Gender:

public enum Gender { Male,Female}

To create a serilizable class you must add Serializable attribute for the class, and use an empty constructor, below is the class for Person:

[Serializable]
public class Person
{
   public string Name;
   public string Address;
   public Gender Gender;
   public DateTime RegistrationDate;
   public double Mark;

   public Person()
      {
      }
}

Now we will create serialize function, which saves the values of Person class object to XML file (Not that we are woking on ASP.NET – C#)

//Create an instance of Person class
Person person = new Person(); //Create File using FileStream
System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(Server.MapPath(“~/SerializedObject.XML”),System.IO.FileMode.Create);

//Initialize it
person.Name = “Ibrahim”;
person.Gender = Gender.Male;
person.Address = “Palestine”;
person.RegistrationDate = new DateTime(2009, 1, 1);
person.Mark = 94.5;

//Create an XmlSerializer object to perform the serialization
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer xs = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(Person));

//Use the XmlSerializer object to serialize the data to the file

xs.Serialize(fs, person);

//Close the file
fs.Close();

The output XML is like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>

<Name>Ibrahim</Name>

<Address>Palestine</Address>

</Person>

The deserialization is very similar:

//Create an of Person class
Person person;�

// Create Filestream object to read the data from
System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(Server.MapPath(“~/SerializedObject.XML”), System.IO.FileMode.Open);

//Create an XmlSerializer object to perform the deserialization
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer xs = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(Person));

// Use the XmlSerializer object to deserialize the data from the file
person = (Person)xs.Deserialize(fs);

//Close the file
fs.Close();

Tha’s all… for more details you may read this or this topic from MSDN.

Thanks for reading.

Tags:.NET C#Deserialization Serialization XML

Eng. Ibrahim Dwaikat

Object to XML Serialization in .NET

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