Memory Leak using StreamReader and XmlSerializer

c#, streamreader, xml, xmlserializer

Solution

The leak is here:

new XmlSerializer(typeof(XMLObj), new XmlRootAttribute("rootNode"))

`XmlSerializer` uses assembly generation, and assemblies cannot be collected. It does some automatic cache/reuse for the simplest constructor scenarios (`new XmlSerializer(Type)`, etc), but not for this scenario. Consequently, you should cache it manually:

static readonly XmlSerializer mySerializer =
    new XmlSerializer(typeof(XMLObj), new XmlRootAttribute("rootNode"))

and use the cached serializer instance.

Problem

I've been googling for the past few hours and trying different things but can't seem to the bottom of this.... When I run this code, the memory usage continuously grows. ``` while (true) { try { foreach (string sym in stringlist) { StreamReader r = new StreamReader(@"C:\Program Files\" + sym + ".xml"); XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(XMLObj), new XmlRootAttribute("rootNode")); XMLObj obj = (XMLObj)xml.Deserialize(r); obj.Dispose(); r.Dispose(); r.Close(); } } catch(Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString()); } Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.Clear(); } ``` XMLObj is a custom object ``` [Serializable()] public class XMLObj: IDisposable { [XmlElement("block")] public List<XMLnode> nodes{ get; set; } public XMLObj() { } public void Dispose() { nodes.ForEach(n => n.Dispose()); nodes= null; GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } } ``` I've tried adding in GC.Collect(); but that doesn't seem to do anything.

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