--- title: "HOWTO: Create an XMLSerializer from a given XML string" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/26/howto-create-an-xmlserializer-from-a-given-xml-string.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/26/howto-create-an-xmlserializer-from-a-given-xml-string.html" published: "2003-03-26T07:32:00" updated: "2003-03-26T07:32:00" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "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…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # HOWTO: Create an XMLSerializer from a given XML string By Roy Osherove March 26, 2003 **Historical article** · Originally published March 26, 2003; technical details may be outdated. 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;
}

--- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/