Question

Generally, this is how I deserialize an XML file:

    string location = "C:\\test.xml";
    XmlObjectClass member_data = new XmlObjectClass();

                using (Stream XmlStream = new FileStream(location,FileMode.Open))
                {
                    data = (XmlObjectClass)serializer.Deserialize(XmlStream);
                }

This works when I’m desrializing an XML file, but what if I want to deserialize an XML that is returned by a web request (i.e. going to a URL)?

Answer 1

Well, there are a few options:

• Create an XmlReader with XmlReader.Create(uri) and deserialize directly
• Get the stream from the WebClient or HttpWebRequest, and deserialize from the stream
• Fetch all the data, then build a stream around it using MemoryStream and deserialize from that

If you don’t need to do anything special with the web request – i.e. it’s really just a “GET” from a URI – then the first option is probably the simplest.