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Asked: 2026-05-10T19:35:14+00:00

I have a simple class that essentially just holds some values. I have overridden

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I have a simple class that essentially just holds some values. I have overridden the ToString() method to return a nice string representation.

Now, I want to create a ToXml() method, that will return something like this:

<Song>     <Artist>Bla</Artist>     <Title>Foo</Title> </Song>

Of course, I could just use a StringBuilder here, but I would like to return an XmlNode or XmlElement, to be used with XmlDocument.AppendChild.

I do not seem to be able to create an XmlElement other than calling XmlDocument.CreateElement, so I wonder if I have just overlooked anything, or if I really either have to pass in either a XmlDocument or ref XmlElement to work with, or have the function return a String that contains the XML I want?

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1 Answer

  1. You may want to look at how you can use the built-in features of .NET to serialize and deserialize an object into XML, rather than creating a ToXML() method on every class that is essentially just a Data Transfer Object.

    I have used these techniques successfully on a couple of projects but don’t have the implementation details handy right now. I will try to update my answer with my own examples sometime later.

    Here’s a couple of examples that Google returned:

    XML Serialization in .NET by Venkat Subramaniam http://www.agiledeveloper.com/articles/XMLSerialization.pdf

    How to Serialize and Deserialize an object into XML http://www.dotnetfunda.com/articles/article98.aspx

    Customize your .NET object XML serialization with .NET XML attributes http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/rotemb/archive/2008/07/27/customize-your-net-object-xml-serialization-with-net-xml-attributes.aspx

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