DataContractSerializer stuck on WriteObject

Question

I have objects (woah!) which can serialise themselves using a Serialise method. I've tried multiple serialise methods, but all have been stuck on the serialize.WriteObject method.

This is what my latest try looks like:

public string Serialise()
{
    DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(this.GetType());
    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
    serializer.WriteObject(ms, this);
    ms.Position = 0;

    string serializedContent;
    using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms))
    {
        serializedContent = sr.ReadToEnd();   
    }
    return serializedContent;
}

I used to do this with a XmlSerializer and those didn't give me any trouble. I'm pretty sure I made my properties a DataMember and set up de DataContract of the class.

What am I doing wrong here? Is it the way I want to use this Serialisation? Is it because I want to serialise inside the class with the DataContract? I'm baffled..

------EDIT---------

Ugh.. I figured out what the problem was... My BaseObject had no DataContract and no DataMembers on their properties (although i would not want any of those properties in my xml). So apparently making only a DataContract for the extended class is not enough to serialise it.

Answer 1

Well you can try out this one

        using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            try
            {
                string xml = string.Empty;
                var dcs = new DataContractSerializer(this.GetType());

                using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.Default))
                {
                    xmlTextWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
                    dcs.WriteObject(xmlTextWriter, this);
                    xmlTextWriter.Flush();
                    var item = (MemoryStream)xmlTextWriter.BaseStream;
                    item.Flush();
                    xml = new UTF8Encoding().GetString(item.ToArray());
                }
            }
            finally
            {
                ms.Close();
            }
        }

        return xml;