Question

I am trying to serialize my Report class info to an XML. At this point I think all of the serialize and deserialize code works, but for the initial write, I’m having trouble performing the serialize, because the XML file doesn’t exist yet.

for an empty text file, i can use:

StreamWriter sw = File.CreateText(@"path");
sw.Close();

this is my code block for the serializing. the exception (Directory not found) is getting thrown on the StreamWriter line. I’d like to simply add an if(!File.Exists(xmlPath))...create empty XML. Or maybe there is a more correct way to do this.

public void SerializeToXML(Report newReport)
        {
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Report));
            TextWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(xmlPath);
            serializer.Serialize(textWriter, newReport);
            textWriter.Close();
        }

Answer 1

The StreamWriter(String) constructor will create the file if it does not already exist:

If the file exists, it is overwritten; otherwise, a new file is created.

However, it will not create any inexistent directories in your path.

DirectoryNotFoundException: The specified path is invalid, such as being on an unmapped drive.

To create any required directories, you can include the following code (at the beginning of your SerializeToXML method):

var dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(xmlPath);
if (!Directory.Exists(dir))
    Directory.CreateDirectory(dir);