Can XmlSerializer.Deserialize ever return null?

Question

I ve been trying in a few different ways to get XmlSerializer.Deserialize to return null however it doesnt seem possible

I tried with a class being null, malformated xml, well formatted xml .

I might be missing something obvious here, but is it possible ?

Just to clarify give a Class MyClass that is serializable I want a similar test to the following to pass

[Fact] //this is a the test attribute when using xUnit
public void When_xml_Something_Then_serialize_returns_null()
{
    string serializedObject = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?><MyClass xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3asdsadasdasd.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\"&gt;&lt;/MyClass&gt;";
    using (var stringReader = new StringReader(serializedObject))
    {
        Assert.Null(new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass)).Deserialize(stringReader));
    }
}

Tried different things in the serialized string, and i either get an exception or an empty instance of MyClass :( Thanks NOTE: there was a typo in this question, it is now corrected

NOTE 2: for a more detailed answer look at the comments.

Answer 1

Yes, Deserialize can return null when the input does not contain XML that is unexpected. This is frequently seen when there is confusion of the XML namespaces. If the input contains a root element with the expected name, but in a different namespace, then null will be returned.

This is often seen when dealing with ASMX web services or with Web References, especially web references against RPC-style services, where the messages are described in terms of the XSD type of the message, and not in terms of the element.

Answer 2

Appearantly, you can view or download the code for the System.Xml part of the .NET framework. This lets you look in the source code to determine when it returns null.