Cloning an object using serialization

This technique is useful when an object has several nested objects.

1. Serialize the original object to XML
2. Deserialize the XML back to a new object
3. Cast the new (cloned) object to the type of the original object

T original;

string xmlCloned;

XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(original.GetType());

using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter())

{

     xs.Serialize(writer, original);

     xmlCloned= writer.ToString();

}

StringReader sr = new StringReader(xmlCloned);

xs = new XmlSerializer(original.GetType());

T cloned = (T)xs.Deserialize(sr);