dotnetable

This simple example shows how to serialise a class as XML. It is an easy way of getting the a full textual copy of the class structure, no matter how complicated the class is. In the past I have seen this used for logging values of a class instance.

First of all we need an class. I have made these up, with a few different types.

public class Person
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public DateTime DOB { get; set; }
    public Address Address { get; set; }
    public int NoOfDependents { get; set; }
    public double Height { get; set; }
}

public class Address
{
    public string Address1 { get; set; }
    public string Address2 { get; set; }
    public string Town { get; set; }
    public string City { get; set; }
    public string PostCode { get; set; }
}

And an instance of the class with some data. For this example I am actually creating a list of Person objects.

var listOfPeople = new List<Person>();

listOfPeople.Add(new Person
{
    DOB = DateTime.Today,
    FirstName = "Bernadette",
    LastName = "Williams-Harrison",
    NoOfDependents = 2,
    Height = 4.6,
    Address = new Address
    {
        Address1 = "2345 Dead End Street",
        Address2 = string.Empty,
        City = "Pembely",
        PostCode = "BB67 9PP",
        Town = "Little Stichins",
    }
});

listOfPeople.Add(new Person
{
    DOB = DateTime.Today,
    FirstName = "Andrew",
    LastName = "Carton",
    NoOfDependents = 1,
    Height = 6.0,
    Address = new Address
    {
        Address1 = "11 Park View",
        Address2 = "Chester House",
        City = string.Empty,
        PostCode = "CM1 4BY",
        Town = "Mordon",
    }
});

And the final part is the code to perform the sreialisation.

var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(listOfPeople.GetType());
var textWriter = new StringWriter();
xmlSerializer.Serialize(textWriter, listOfPeople);

var result = textWriter.ToString();

The result variable will be of string type, containing XML. This is what it looks like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<ArrayOfPerson xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Person>
    <FirstName>Bernadette</FirstName>
    <LastName>Williams-Harrison</LastName>
    <DOB>2014-05-14T00:00:00+01:00</DOB>
    <Address>
      <Address1>2345 Dead End Street</Address1>
      <Address2 />
      <Town>Little Stichins</Town>
      <City>Pembely</City>
      <PostCode>BB67 9PP</PostCode>
    </Address>
    <NoOfDependents>2</NoOfDependents>
    <Height>4.6</Height>
  </Person>
  <Person>
    <FirstName>Andrew</FirstName>
    <LastName>Carton</LastName>
    <DOB>2014-05-14T00:00:00+01:00</DOB>
    <Address>
      <Address1>11 Park View</Address1>
      <Address2>Chester House</Address2>
      <Town>Mordon</Town>
      <City />
      <PostCode>CM1 4BY</PostCode>
    </Address>
    <NoOfDependents>1</NoOfDependents>
    <Height>6</Height>
  </Person>
</ArrayOfPerson>

One thing to note is the resulting text may contain formatting characters, such as \r, \n, \” or others.  Do with them what you will.