Serializing/De-serializing an ArrayList

Declarations:

'Type of each element in the ArrayList
Public Structure ArrayListEntry
…
End Structure

'ArrayList containing elements of above type
Public myArrayList As New ArrayList

Declare a custom serializer:

Dim customSerializer As New XmlSerializer(GetType(Object()), New System.Type() {GetType(ArrayListEntry)})

Methods to serialize data into XML:

A custom serializer must be used.

Public Sub saveSerializedData(ByVal datafile As String, ByVal ConfigObj As Object, ByVal serializer as XmlSerializer) As Boolean
Dim writer As New StreamWriter(datafile)
serializer.Serialize(writer, ConfigObj)
writer.Close()
End Sub

To use the method:

saveSerializedData("out.xml", myArrayList.ToArray, customSerializer)

Method to de-serialize data back to Object:

Public Function readSerializedData(ByVal datafile As String, ByRef ConfigType As Type) As Object
Dim retConf As Object = Nothing
Dim serializer As XmlSerializer = New XmlSerializer(ConfigType)
Dim fs As New FileStream(datafile, FileMode.Open)
retConf = serializer.Deserialize(fs)
fs.Close()
Return retConf
End Function

To use the method:

myArrayList.AddRange(CType(readSerializedData("out.xml", myArrayList.GetType, isok, customSerializer), Collections.ICollection))