Standard helper for XML Serialization

XmlSerializer.cs

using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace Common
{
    /// <summary>
    ///     XML Serialization utils.
    /// </summary>
    public static class XmlSerializer
    {
        /// <summary>
        ///     Serializes entity to XML string.
        /// </summary>
        public static string SerializeToString<T>(T entity) where T : class
        {
            using (Stream dataStream = SerializeToStream(entity))
            {
                return new StreamReader(dataStream).ReadToEnd();
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        ///     Deserializes entity from XML string.
        /// </summary>
        public static T DeserializeFromString<T>(string data) where T : class
        {
            using(var dataStream = new MemoryStream())
            using (var sw = new StreamWriter(dataStream))
            {
                sw.Write(data);
                sw.Flush();
                dataStream.Seek(0, 0);
                return DeserializeFromStream<T>(dataStream);
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        ///     Serializes entity to XML stream.
        /// </summary>
        public static Stream SerializeToStream<T>(T entity) where T : class
        {
            XmlSerializerNamespaces namespaces = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
            namespaces.Add(string.Empty, string.Empty);

            var ser = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
            var data = new MemoryStream();
            ser.Serialize(data, entity, namespaces);
            data.Seek(0, 0);
            return data;
        }

        /// <summary>
        ///     Deserializes entity from XML stream.
        /// </summary>
        public static T DeserializeFromStream<T>(Stream data) where T : class
        {
            var ser = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
            data.Seek(0, 0);
            return ser.Deserialize(data) as T;
        }
    }
}