Question

Ok so the class I want to use is declared with:

public static class ObjectXMLSerializer<T> where T : class

I have many objects that I want to serialize, but I do not know their “class”

object myclass = new MyNamespace.MyClass() as object;

How do I do the following… ?

ObjectXMLSerializer< ? >.Save(myclass,"output.xml");

I can’t do this because the type that is expected, is “class”

ObjectXMLSerializer< myclass.GetType() >.Save(myclass,"output.xml");

And this just wouldnt work …

ObjectXMLSerializer< object >.Save(myclass,"output.xml");

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Don’t use generics if XML serialization is all that you care about:

public static class ObjectXMLSerializer { 
  public static void Save(object objectToSerialize, string fileName) { 
    // ...
  } 
} 

Alternatively, look at the XmlSerializer class, it might already cover your requirements:

public static class ObjectXMLSerializer {
  public static void Save(object objectToSerialize, string fileName) {
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(objectToSerialize.GetType());
    using (var stream = File.OpenWrite(fileName)) {
      serializer.Serialize(stream, objectToSerialize);
    }
  }
}

To deserialize, though, since you must know the compile-time type of the object that you want, you could use generics on the deserialization method:

public static class ObjectXMLDeserializer {
  public static T Load<T>(string fileName) { 
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
    using (var stream = File.OpenRead(fileName)) {
      return (T)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
    }
  } 
}