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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