Using DataContractSerializer to serialize, but can't deserialize back

Question

I have the following 2 functions:

public static string Serialize(object obj)
{
    DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType         


        

Answer 1

I ended up doing the following and it works.

public static string Serialize(object obj)
{
    using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
        serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, obj);
        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
    }
}

public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType)
{
    using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml)))
    {
        XmlDictionaryReader reader = XmlDictionaryReader.CreateTextReader(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8, new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas(), null);
        DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(toType);
        return serializer.ReadObject(reader);
    }
}

It seems that the major problem was in the Serialize function when calling stream.GetBuffer(). Calling stream.ToArray() appears to work.

Answer 2

Here is how I've always done it:

    public static string Serialize(object obj) {
        using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
        using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(memoryStream)) {
            DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
            serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, obj);
            memoryStream.Position = 0;
            return reader.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }

    public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType) {
        using(Stream stream = new MemoryStream()) {
            byte[] data = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
            stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
            stream.Position = 0;
            DataContractSerializer deserializer = new DataContractSerializer(toType);
            return deserializer.ReadObject(stream);
        }
    }

Answer 3

Other solution is:

public static T Deserialize<T>(string rawXml)
{
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(rawXml)))
    {
        DataContractSerializer formatter0 = 
            new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
        return (T)formatter0.ReadObject(reader);
    }
}

One remark: sometimes it happens that raw xml contains e.g.:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

then of course you can't use UTF8 encoding used in other examples..

Answer 4

This best for XML Deserialize

 public static object Deserialize(string xml, Type toType)
    {

        using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml)))
        {
            System.IO.StreamReader str = new System.IO.StreamReader(memoryStream);
            System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer xSerializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(toType);
            return xSerializer.Deserialize(str);
        }

    }