How to convert an XmlDocument to an array<byte>?

Question

I constructed an XmlDocument and now I want to convert it to an array. How can this be done?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Write it to a MemoryStream and then call ToArray on the stream:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;

class Test
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        XmlElement root = doc.CreateElement("root");
        XmlElement element = doc.CreateElement("child");
        root.AppendChild(element);
        doc.AppendChild(root);

        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        doc.Save(ms);
        byte[] bytes = ms.ToArray();
        Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes));
    }
}

For more control over the formatting, you can create an XmlWriter from the stream and use XmlDocument.WriteTo(writer).

Answer 2

Try the following:

using System.Text;
using System.Xml;

XmlDocument dom = GetDocument()
byte[] bytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(dom.OuterXml);

If you want to preserve the text encoding of the document, then change the Default encoding to the desired encoding, or follow John Skeet's suggestion.