Read And Write Dynamic T Object Into XML File

In this write-up, I will demonstrate a simple example for reading and writing a List<T> object into XML file, using XML Serialization in C# application.

Here, we have a class called Customer, for customer details.

class Customer
{
       public int Id { get; set; }
       public string FirstName { get; set; }
       public string LastName { get; set; }
       public string Address { get; set; }
       public string Mobile { get; set; }
       public DateTime DOB { get; set; }
       public char Sex { get; set; }
}

Then, we have a List of Customer details.

List<Customer> customer = new List<Customer>();
customer.Add(new Customer { Id = 1, FirstName = "Prakash", LastName = "Kumar", Address = "Thiruvannamali", Mobile = "9940793046", DOB =   Convert.ToDateTime("27/04/1990"), Sex = 'M' });
customer.Add(new Customer { Id = 1, FirstName = "Murali", LastName = "Pichandi", Address = "Thiruvannamali", Mobile = "9940793046", DOB = Convert.ToDateTime("15/05/1989"), Sex = 'M' });

To read and write an XML file using XML Serialization, I have declared two parameters - list of T class and filename as a parameter,

The following functions will specify the reading and writing the XML files using the XML Serialization.

Read function -

public List<T> ReadXML<T>(string filename)
{
    string filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"), "App_Data", filename);
                List<T> result;
    if (!System.IO.File.Exists(filePath))
    {
          return new List<T>();
    }

    XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<T>));
    using (FileStream myFileStream = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open))
    {
        result = (List<T>)ser.Deserialize(myFileStream);
    }
    return result;
}

Write function -

public void WriteXML<T>(List<T> list, string filename)
{
        string filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"), "App_Data", filename);
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<T>));
        using (TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(filePath))
        {
                serializer.Serialize(tw, list);
                tw.Close();
        }
}

The above functions are used for reading and writing a dynamic <T> object into an XML file.

Now, we are able to read and write a dynamic list of classes into an XML file, using the Serialization method.