Persisting objects in a ListBox ObjectCollection

Question

I have a C# WinForms app containing a ListBox control, which I populate with objects of type BukkitServer. When an object is added or removed from the list, I want to write them to an XML file. I have a static method in a helper class that takes an ICollection argument and achieves this.

However, since the ListBox.ObjectCollection class is not serializable (fittingly, since it contains elements of type object), I wrote a helper method to convert it to a List<BukkitServer>.

It feels like a hack, though, and I feel (hope) there is a cleaner answer.

Any other comments and criticisms are welcome as well.

static class BukkitServerDataWriter {

    public static void SaveServers(ICollection objects) {

        using (XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter("servers.xml", Encoding.UTF8)) {
            XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(
                typeof(List<BukkitServer>), 
                new Type[] { typeof(BukkitServer) });

            List<BukkitServer> servers = MakeBukkitServerList(objects);
            xml.Serialize(writer, servers);
        }

    }


    private static List<BukkitServer> MakeBukkitServerList(ICollection collection) {

        List<BukkitServer> servers = new List<BukkitServer>();
        foreach (object obj in collection) {
            servers.Add((BukkitServer)obj);
        }

        return servers;
    }

}

Answer 1

If you don't mind using a little bit of LINQ, it can be simplified (and optimized) as such:

static class BukkitServerDataWriter
{
    private static readonly XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(
        typeof(List<BukkitServer>),
        new[] { typeof(BukkitServer) });

    public static void SaveServers(ICollection objects)
    {
        using (var writer = new XmlTextWriter("servers.xml", Encoding.UTF8))
        {
            xml.Serialize(writer, objects.Cast<BukkitServer>().ToList());
        }
    }
}