I came up with some generic methods to do the job:
Public Shared Function DeserializeXMLToObject(ByVal input As String, ByVal type As System.Type) As Object
Dim result As Object = Nothing
Dim serializer As New XmlSerializer(type)
Try
result = serializer.Deserialize(New XmlTextReader(New StringReader(input)))
Catch ex As Exception
Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message)
End Try
Return result
End Function
Public Shared Function SerializeObjectToXML(ByVal input As Object, ByVal type As System.Type) As String
Dim returnXML As String = String.Empty
Dim serializer As New XmlSerializer(type)
Dim writer As New StringWriter
Try
serializer.Serialize(New XmlTextWriter(writer), input)
returnXML = writer.ToString()
Catch ex As Exception
Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message)
Finally
writer.Close()
End Try
Return returnXML
End Function
There are a few things to watch out for with the XmlSerilizer:
- When deserializing, if the xml is not well-formed, then an exception will be thrown.
- Also when deserializing, if there are empty elements like <author></author> or <author/> it seems to throw an exception. I am guessing that it expects empty elements to just not be in the xml. I have not found a way around this yet.
- When you send in xml that does not match the object you are trying to deserialize, no exception is thrown, the object is basically empty.
When the XmlSerilizer serializes the object it comes out looking something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<Books xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<Book>
<Title>David McCarter's VB Tips & Techniques</Title>
</Book>
</Books>
Where I work, we are saving our xml to hardware devices with limited memory. So the <?xml> element and "xmlns" attributes are taking up limited resources and have to be removed. You would think there would be a property in the XmlSerilizer to omit this extra stuff, but there isn't. So I had to roll my own. I changed the SerilizeObjectToXML call a little and added a new method called CleanXML.
Public Shared Function SerializeObjectToXML(ByVal input As Object, ByVal type As System.Type, ByVal clean As Boolean) As String
Dim returnXML As String = String.Empty
Dim serializer As New XmlSerializer(type)
Dim writer As New StringWriter
Try
serializer.Serialize(New XmlTextWriter(writer), input)
returnXML = writer.ToString()
If clean Then
returnXML = CleanXML(returnXML)
End If
Catch ex As Exception
Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message)
Finally
writer.Close()
End Try
Return returnXML
End Function
Private Shared Function CleanXML(ByVal input As String) As String
Dim readerXML As New XmlTextReader(New StringReader(input))
Dim writer As New StringWriter
Dim writerXML As New XmlTextWriter(writer)
Dim returnXML As String = String.Empty
Try
'writerXML.WriteStartDocument()
While readerXML.Read()
Select Case readerXML.NodeType
Case XmlNodeType.Element
writerXML.WriteStartElement(readerXML.Name)
If (readerXML.HasAttributes) Then
'Cannot just use writer.WriteAttributes,
'else it will also emit xmlns attribute
While readerXML.MoveToNextAttribute()
If (readerXML.Name.CompareTo("xmlns") = -1) Then
writerXML.WriteAttributeString(readerXML.Name, readerXML.Value)
End If
End While
readerXML.MoveToElement()
End If
If (readerXML.IsEmptyElement) Then
writerXML.WriteEndElement()
End If
Case XmlNodeType.Text
writerXML.WriteString(readerXML.Value)
Case XmlNodeType.CDATA
writerXML.WriteCData(readerXML.Value)
Case XmlNodeType.ProcessingInstruction
writerXML.WriteProcessingInstruction(readerXML.Name, readerXML.Value)
Case XmlNodeType.Comment
writerXML.WriteComment(readerXML.Value)
Case XmlNodeType.EntityReference
writerXML.WriteEntityRef(readerXML.Name)
Case XmlNodeType.EndElement
writerXML.WriteEndElement()
End Select
End While
'writerXML.WriteEndDocument()
writerXML.Flush()
returnXML = writer.ToString()
Finally
writerXML.Close()
readerXML.Close()
writer.Close()
End Try
Return returnXML
End Function
The readerXML.Name.CompareTo("xmlns") line in the method above will remove the "xmlns" attributes and the commented out WriteStartDocument and WriteEndDocument calls to the writer will remove the <?xml> element. Now your xml is bare!
But be careful when using this CleanXML, as I just found out, if your classes specify the xml namespace by using the XmlRoot or XmlType attributes, then deserializing won't work unless you put the "xmlns" attribute back in (that is my next task to do after I post this tip).
.NET 2.0 And Generics
Here is the same code but for .NET 2.0 using generics:
Public Shared Function DeserializeXML(Of T)(ByVal xml As String) As T
Dim serializer As New Serialization.XmlSerializer(GetType(T))
Return DirectCast(serializer.Deserialize(New XmlTextReader(New IO.StringReader(xml))), T)
End Function
Public Shared Function SerializeToXML(Of T)(ByVal obj As T) As String
Dim returnXML As String = String.Empty
Dim serializer As New Serialization.XmlSerializer(GetType(T))
Using writer As New IO.StringWriter
serializer.Serialize(New XmlTextWriter(writer), obj)
returnXML = writer.ToString()
End Using
Return returnXML
End Function
Tip Submitted By: David McCarter