Question

I have the following code

    public void SerializeToStream(Stream stream)
    {
        var xml = // Linq to xml code here

        // Write to the stream
        var writer = new StreamWriter(stream);
        writer.Write(xml.ToString());
    }

My xml object has the correct data, and I have verified that xml.ToString() shows everything correctly, but after writer.Write(xml.ToString()) is called my incoming stream (regardless if it’s a FileStream or MemoryStream still has nothing in it (and a length of zero). No exceptions are thrown. Why is this happening?

As a note, I cannot use xml.WriteTo() because the XmlWriter class adds extra stuff (the <xml> declaration tag) which I cannot have in my xml (Company policy for integration with another system I do not have control over).

Answer 1

You’re never flushing or closing the writer. (I’d normally suggest closing the writer, but that will also close the stream, which may not be what you want.) Simply add:

writer.Flush();

at the end of the method.

Note that you can remove the XML declaration from an XDocument, if you want. For example:

XDocument doc = new XDocument
    (new XDeclaration("1.0", "utf-8", "yes"),
     new XElement("Root", "content"));
doc.Save(Console.Out); // Includes <? xml ... ?>
doc.Declaration = null;
doc.Save(Console.Out); // No declaration...

That should make it simpler:

public void SerializeToStream(Stream stream)
{
    var xml = // Linq to xml code here
    xml.Declaration = null;
    xml.Save(stream);
}