Serialize XML (via IXmlSerializable) to XmlDocument

Question

I'm trying to write an XmlDocument from an instance of a class to pass to BizTalk (2006 R2, if it matters). I'm implementing IXmlSerializable because I believe it'll give me the most flexibility (this object won't necessarilly always be written to an XmlDocument and passed to BizTalk).

So, I have implemented IXmlSerializable, and now I'd like to use the Write() method to create the actual XmlDocument instance to be passed to BizTalk. Something like:

XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
xDoc.LoadXml(XmlWriter.Create(this.Write());

Obviously the above doesn't work: I'm pretty sure it doesn't even compile... but that's the functionality I'm looking for.

Does anyone have a canned solution for this, or a place I can go to look for examples or a tutorial?

Answer 1

IXmlSerializable is implemented when you would like to add custom serialization logic, this means that you need to use the XmlSerializer to have it call your implemented logic.

XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());
ser.Serialize(stream, this);

stream could be XmlWriter, TextWriter, Stream which you can then load into XmlDocument if you wish.

Here is some more info

IXmlSerializable Interface