Writing to XML resource file through serialization

So I'm writing a C# app that has a couple of XML files added as resources. I read from these XML files to populate objects in the code using XML serialization and it works perfectly. So I can access the files like so (I've left some code out, just have the important bits):

using TestApp.Properties;

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MapTiles));
StringReader sr = new StringReader(Resources.Maps);
mapTiles = (MapTiles)serializer.Deserialize(sr);

Now however, I'd like to do the opposite. I'd like to take some data and write it to these XML resource files. However, I seem to be running into trouble with this aspect and was hoping someone could see something I'm messing up or let me know what I need to do? Here's what I'm trying to do:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MapTiles));
TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter(Resources.Maps);
serializer.Serialize(writer, tempGroup);
writer.Close();

When I run this code though, I get an error on the 2nd line that says ArgumentException was unhandled开发者_StackOverflow中文版 - Empty path name is not legal.

So if anyone has any thoughts I would greatly appreciate some tips. Thanks so much.

The exception is being raised because you are passing Resources.Maps into StreamWriter. StreamWriter is handling this as a string and assuming it is file path for the stream. But the file path is empty so it is throwing an exception.

To fix out the StreamWriter line you could specify a local temporary file instead of Resources.Maps or use StringWriter with the default constructor e.g. new StringWriter().

If you are writing .resx files then ResXResourceWriter is the class you need. It will also handle your stream writing too. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.resources.resxresourcewriter.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ekyft91f.aspx. The second page has examples on how to use the class but breifly you would call something like this:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MapTiles));

using (StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter())
{
  serializer.Serialize(stringWriter, tempGroup);

  using (ResXResourceWriter resourceWriter = new ResXResourceWriter("~/App_GlobalResources/some_file.resx"))
  {
     resourceWriter.AddResource("Maps", stringWriter.ToString());
  }
}

If you want to write out an assembly that has a dynamically created resource in it the you can emit a new assembly. In that case have a look here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8ye65dh0.aspx.

The StreamWriter constructor is throwing the exception because Resources.Maps is an empty string.

Check out the documentation on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fysy0a4b.aspx

Hmm, after trying some other things and doing even more research it appears that the problem is that you cannot write to a resource that is part of the application. Something to do with the resource being written into the assembly and therefore it's not writable. So I'll have to modify my approach and write the output to a different file.

Unless of course anyone does know differently. This is just what I've discovered so far. Thanks to those who had some ideas though, much appreciated.