Is it possible to load a .config file from a string of XML in memory without writing to file?

Question

I know how to use the ConfigurationFileMap class and ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedMachineConfiguration to load a Configuration object from a file, but is there a way to just load a Configuration object from purely the XML?

Answer 1

Yes. This helper class should allow you to read or write any object to/from xml, including your ConfigurationManager object.

public static class XmlUtility
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Serializes an object to an XML string.
    /// </summary>
    public static string ToXML(object Obj)
    {
        Type T = Obj.GetType();
        XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(T);
        using (System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream())
        {
            xs.Serialize(ms, Obj);
            UTF8Encoding ue = new UTF8Encoding();
            return ue.GetString(ms.ToArray());
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Deserializes an object from an XML string.
    /// </summary>
    public static T FromXML<T>(string xml)
    {
        XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
        using (StringReader sr = new StringReader(xml))
        {
            return (T)xs.Deserialize(sr);
        }
    }
}