XML Serialization objects generically

Below is an example to serialize and deserialize an object using generics in C#:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

public class MyClass
{
    public static void RunSnippet()
    {
        string test = "abc";
        int number = 123;
        WL(XMLSerializationUtility.SerializeObject(Encoding.UTF8, test));
        WL(XMLSerializationUtility.SerializeObject(Encoding.UTF8, abc));

    }
    
    #region Helper methods
    
    public static void Main()
    {
        try
        {
            RunSnippet();
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            string error = string.Format("---\nThe following error occurred while executing the snippet:\n{0}\n---", e.ToString());
            Console.WriteLine(error);
        }
        finally
        {
            Console.Write("Press any key to continue...");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }

    private static void WL(object text, params object[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(text.ToString(), args);    
    }
    
    private static void RL()
    {
        Console.ReadLine();    
    }
    
    private static void Break() 
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
    }

    #endregion
}


  
public class XMLSerializationUtility
{
    public static T DeserializeObject<T>( Encoding encoding, string xml )
    {
        try
        {
            using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream( StringToByteArray( encoding, xml ) ) )
            {
                using ( XmlTextWriter xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter( memoryStream, encoding ) )
                {
                    XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer( typeof( T ) );
 
                    return (T)xmlSerializer.Deserialize( memoryStream );
                }
            }
        }
        catch
        {
            return default( T );
        }
    }
 
    public static string SerializeObject<T>( Encoding encoding, T obj )
    {
        try
        {
            using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                using ( XmlTextWriter xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter( memoryStream, encoding ) )
                {
                    XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer( typeof( T ) );
                    xmlSerializer.Serialize( xmlTextWriter, obj );
    
                    memoryStream = (MemoryStream)xmlTextWriter.BaseStream;
                }
    
                return ByteArrayToString( encoding, memoryStream.ToArray() );
            }
        }
        catch
        {
            return string.Empty;
        }
    }
 
    private static Byte[] StringToByteArray( Encoding encoding, string xml )
    {
        return encoding.GetBytes( xml );
    }
 
    private static string ByteArrayToString( Encoding encoding, byte[] byteArray )
    {
        return encoding.GetString( byteArray );
    }
}

Source: http://www.dotnet-snippets.de/dns/objekt-serialisierung-SID1407.aspx