XmlSerializer class for reading and writing XML.

There are many ways to read and write XML.

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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