public static string ToXml(this T value)
{
return Serialize(value);
}

public static T FromXml(this string rawValue)
{
return Deserialize(rawValue);
}

Generic extension methods! Success!

someObject.ToXml()

and SomeObjectClass.FromXml();

(you’d have to extend your helper to allow for Type parameters b/c generic calls without knowing the T at compile time is only doable through ugly reflection)

Yeah thanks for the heads up on the binary serialization, I always forget about that one too.

@Max

Neither am I normally, but I’m subverting my blog as a personal code repository on this one

I tend to make mine a single SerializationHelper that can do both Xml and Binary serialization. So I have the following methods as well:

public static byte[] BinarySerialize(object obj)
{
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
formatter.Serialize(ms, obj);
return ms.ToArray();
}
}

public static T BinaryDeserialize(byte[] data) where T : class
{
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(data))
{
BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
return formatter.Deserialize(ms) as T;
}
}

(apologies in advance – as I’m sure the formatting of that code sux as a comment)