The advantage of the XmlSerializer class is that you can read and/or write XML with very little code. Most of the code required is simply the definition of the data. In other words, if our data is a list of Links consisting of a HREF or URL, a title and a category, then that data could be defined in the following manner:
public class LinkObject
{
string ThisCategory;
string ThisHRef;
string ThisTitle;
public string Category
{
get { return ThisCategory; }
set { ThisCategory = value; }
}
public string HRef
{
get { return ThisHRef; }
set { ThisHRef = value; }
}
public string Title
{
get { return ThisTitle; }
set { ThisTitle = value; }
}
}
Using the XmlSerializer class, we use Serialize.Deserialize to read the data and XmlSerializer.Serialize to write the data. An instance of the XmlSerializer class could be created using:
XmlSerializer Serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(LinkObjectsList));
Then the data could be written using:
TextWriter Writer = new StreamWriter(Filename);
Serializer.Serialize(Writer, LinksList);
Writer.Close();
Data could be read using:
TextReader Reader = new StreamReader(Filename);
LinksList = (LinkObjectsList)Serializer.Deserialize(Reader);
Reader.Close();
It is nearly that easy. Note that when the data is as simple of the above data, it is possible to read and write the data using a DataTable. If however the data is more complicated than what a single DataTable is capable of, then the XmlSerializer class can be easier (see below).
Note that the LinkObject class above represents one link. We are writing and reading a list of links, where list could be called an array or a collection or a table or something else. We can create a list of links using:
List<LinkObject> LinksList = new List<LinkObject>();
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