Serialize and Deserialize objects as Xml using generic types in VB.Net

In his blog post Serialize and deserialize objects as xml using generic types in C# 2.0 , Paul Whitaker creates some ubiquitous functions for doing Xml Serialization with generics.

 

To serialize:

Dim lsXml As String = GenericXmlSerializer.SerializeObject(of MyObjectType)(myObject)

 

To deserialize:

Dim myObject As MyObjectType = GenericXmlSerializer.DeserializeObject(of MyObjectType)(lsXml)

 

Here’s the code

Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Xml.Serialization

Class GenericXmlSerializer
    ''' <summary>
    ''' To convert a Byte Array of Unicode values (UTF-8 encoded) to a complete String.
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="characters">Unicode Byte Array to be converted to String</param>
    ''' <returns>String converted from Unicode Byte Array</returns>
    Public Shared Function UTF8ByteArrayToString(ByVal characters As Byte()) As String

        Dim encoding As New UTF8Encoding
        Dim constructedString As String = encoding.GetString(characters)
        Return constructedString

    End Function

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Converts the String to UTF8 Byte array and is used in De serialization
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="pXmlString"></param>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    Public Shared Function StringToUTF8ByteArray(ByVal pXmlString As String) As Byte()

        Dim encoding As New UTF8Encoding()
        Dim byteArray As Byte() = encoding.GetBytes(pXmlString)
        Return byteArray
    End Function

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Serialize an object into an XML string
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
    ''' <param name="obj"></param>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    Public Shared Function SerializeObject(Of T)(ByVal obj As T) As String

        Try
            Dim xmlString As String = Nothing

            Dim memoryStream As New MemoryStream()
            Dim xs As New XmlSerializer(GetType(T))
            Dim xmlTextWriter As New XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8)
            xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, obj)
            memoryStream = CType(xmlTextWriter.BaseStream, MemoryStream)
            xmlString = UTF8ByteArrayToString(memoryStream.ToArray())
            memoryStream.Dispose()

            Return xmlString
        Catch

            Return String.Empty
        End Try
    End Function

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Reconstruct an object from an XML string
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="xml"></param>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    Public Shared Function DeserializeObject(Of T)(ByVal xml As String) As T

        Dim xs As New XmlSerializer(GetType(T))
        Dim memoryStream As New MemoryStream(StringToUTF8ByteArray(xml))
        Dim xmlTextWriter As New XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8)

        Dim theObject As T = CType(xs.Deserialize(memoryStream), T)
        memoryStream.Dispose()
        Return theObject

    End Function

End Class

 

Rather than be original, I converted most of his code verbatim and have found the functions useful. 

I offer them to you warranty free, unadorned and hopefully useful.

 

 

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Flick Scrolling in Winforms

 

In the article A Simple Scroll Controller for Winforms I mentioned that I was working on a FlickScrolling framework for Winforms.

I finished a version of this code a couple of months ago and it seems to work well.  

The code never went into production because I think that Windows 7 will provide this functionality automatically for winforms applications. 

Nevertheless, some people have showed an interest in what I came up with, so I’m posting it here for your edification.  I hope someone finds it useful.

Usage

To use, simply instantiate the “ApplicationFlickScrolling” class, passing in the datatypes of the container controls you wish to scroll.

For example:

Private Shared moApplicationFlick As New ApplicationFlickScrolling(GetType(Panel))

To switch it on and off, used the “Enabled” property:

moApplicationFlick.Enabled = True

That’s it!

 

The Implementation

The code consists of 3 classes:

• ApplicationFlickScrolling to act as the master controller class
• ApplicationMouseEvents class for detecting mouse events
• FlickDetector for detecting simple gestures
• ScrollController for performing elastic-style easing of scrolling

Improvements

If I’d have continued developing this I would have modified ScrollController to use “proper” easing functions. 

 

Download Sample

 

Note: The usual disclaimers apply for this code, which has been given freely to help others learn and is not intended for usage in your business application or for running a nuclear facility.

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