HOWTO: Create an XMLSerializer from a given XML string

March 26, 2003 Roy Osherove

Well, I got some great replies on my appearently rookie question..;) .I'll post them here for others to learn from. that's what it's all about , isn't it?

The Problem: Given an XML string, create an instance of the XMLSerializer class, allowing you to construct or serialize an object of a specific type.

There were two solutions right away. They both seem pretty darn obvious - once you read them :) thanks folks!

Solution 1: Use a stringBuilder Object to create a stream

By : Jan Tielens

You can use the StringBuilder to create a stream.

I use it with CodeDom too, like this:
Private Function GetVBCode(ByVal code As CodeTypeDeclaration) As String
Dim gen As New VBCodeProvider

Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder
Dim stream As New IO.StringWriter(sb)
gen.CreateGenerator().GenerateCodeFromType(code, stream, Nothing)
stream.Close()

Return sb.ToString
End Function

Solution 2: Use a MemoryStream Object to translate the string into a stream, which is needed to intialize the XMLSerializer

By Christian Weyer

[...]
string xmlString = @"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?><TestType><Number>42</Number><Value>Christian</Value></TestType>";

System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
System.IO.TextWriter writer = new System.IO.StreamWriter( ms );
writer.Write(xmlString);
writer.Flush();

ms.Seek(0, System.IO.SeekOrigin.Begin);
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TestType));
TestType tt = (TestType)serializer.Deserialize(ms);
[...]

public class TestType
{
public int Number;
public string Value;
}