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