My array items can have different names, but they all have simple string values, e.g.:
<MyArray>
<TypeA>foo</TypeA>
<TypeA>bar</TypeA>
<TypeB>bazz</TypeB>
</MyArray>
How do I achieve this?
I'm looking at the documentation on MSDN here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2baksw0z(v=vs.110).aspx
There is an example that looks like what I want, but I can't get it to work the way they say it should:
public class Employee {
public string Name;
}
public class Group {
[XmlArrayItem("MemberName")]
public Employee[] Employees;
}
The resulting XML will supposedly look like this:
<Group>
<Employees>
<MemberName>Haley</MemberName>
</Employees>
</Group>
However, when I run this example, I get the following XML instead:
<Group>
<Employees>
<MemberName>
<Name>Haley</Name>
</MemberName>
</Employees>
</Group>
I'm assuming there's a mistake in the documentation (I don't see anything in their code that should magically result in the value of the class Employee being substituted by the value its Name property), but I'm actually interested in getting my XML to look like their (erroneous?) example.
I found the solution as soon as I posted the question: use XmlTextAttribute.
In their example, Employee class should have looked like this:
public class Employee {
[XmlText]
public string Name;
}
In my case, my collection can contain TypeA and TypeB, where each type has one member with an [XmlText] attribute.
Related
I need to deserialize the flowing xml in c#
<Show>
<status>Canceled</status>
</Show>
<Show>
<status>2</status>
</Show>
my class is
[XmlRoot("Show")]`
public class Show
{
[XmlElement(ElementName = "status")]
public object status { get; set; }
}
and it works but i would like to deserialize it into an enum where in this example cancel is equal 2
public enum ShowStatus
{
[XmlEnum("Canceled")]
Canceled = 2
}
is there any way to do that without parse the public object status { get; set; } string value to enum
If you want to Deserialize the Enum using the name or the integer you can decorate the Enum with XmlEnum attribute and supply the integer.
This will deserialise "Canceled" and "2" as your Enum.
Example:
[XmlRoot("Show")]
public class Show
{
[XmlElement(ElementName = "status")]
public ShowStatus status { get; set; }
}
public enum ShowStatus
{
[XmlEnum("2")]
Canceled = 2
}
Test xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ArrayOfShow xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Show>
<status>Canceled</status>
</Show>
<Show>
<status>2</status>
</Show>
</ArrayOfShow>
you cannot use object directly, XmlSerializer simply refuses to work with generics. Objects still have an underlying type, and when its de-serialzied, you have no idea what that type is. I made a workaround for it here but its not very pretty, or very useful.
You can custom implement IXmlSerializable, but that is a headache and a half.
I am assuming that the source of the problem is that you are taking this in as input from another source, and the field could be either integer or text, which you want to store as an enumerable. You are probably better of de-serializing it into a string, then simply parsing it later, afterwards. That would probably be the easiest way to do it. Everything else I can find is either about deserializing only the string values, or only the integer values, I have no idea if either of them can handle both forms of data, but it seems unlikely.
This Function will probably help you out a lot when it comes to that, it looks like it can handle the string or the numerical value, but I dont think XmlSerializer can use it. You would be better off with a string "dummy" that can save back to the Enum property using the Parse function. see this stackoverflow question for an example of the dummy property.
Example
Generally speaking it would look something like this:
[XmlRoot("Show")]`
public class Show
{
[XmlIgnore()]
public ShowStatus status { get; set; }
[XmlElement(ElementName = "status")]
public string StatusString
{
get { return status.ToString(); }
set { status = Enum.Parse(ShowStatus, value); }
}
}
In the app I'm currently working with the user is allowed to store a lot of settings divided in different categories in XML files.
The XML could look like
<settings>
<setting2>
<setting3>
<value1>foo</value1>
<value2>bar</value2>
</setting3>
<value3>A list of strings</value3>
</setting2>
<setting4>
<value4>An integer</value4>
</setting4>
</settings>
The thing I'm confused about is how to best structure the class containing this information, I started out by doing a recursive class containing a list of categories and values, and now I remembered that there is a tree collection class in Java and something like that would be the best solution?
What do you guys recommend?
Why not just load the entire XML file into an XPathDocument? It's easy to use and quite speedy.
You could access individual settings like so:
XPathDocument xmldoc = new XPathDocument(settingsFile);
XPathNavigator nav = xmldoc.CreateNavigator();
foreach (XPathNavigator node in nav.Select("settings/setting2/setting3"))
{
...
}
I would stand for more OO approach.
public abstract class SettingAbstract
{
public abstract List<Setting> Children {get;set;}
public abstract List<object> Values {get;set}
public XmlNode SaveMe();
}
and after concrete implementation for every setting type
public Setting2 : SettingAbstract
{
//concrete implementation
}
public Setting3 : SettingAbstract
{
//concrete implementation
}
......
......
Something like this.
Hopefully a question with a very simple answer, but it's not one that I've been able to find. I have a small XML document that looks roughly like this:
<aa>
<bb><name>bb1</name></bb>
<bb><name>bb2</name></bb>
<bb><name>bb3</name></bb>
</aa>
I have classes that represent aa and bb
[XmlRoot("aa")]
public class aa
{
[XmlArray("bbs")]
[XmlArrayItem("bb")]
public bb[] bbs;
}
public class bb
{
[XmlElement("name")]
public string Name;
}
When I try to deserialize the document using an XmlSerializer I get an aa object with a null bbs property.
As I understand it this is because the attributes I've used on the bbs property tell the serializer to expect a document like this:
<aa>
<bbs>
<bb><name>bb1</name></bb>
<bb><name>bb2</name></bb>
<bb><name>bb3</name></bb>
</bbs>
</aa>
Given that I cannot change the format of the XML I am receiving, is there a way to tell the XmlSerialiser to expect an array that is not wrapped inside another tag?
Try replacing your [XmlArray("bbs")] and [XmlArrayItem("bb")] attributes with a single [XmlElement] attribute
[XmlRoot("aa")]
public class aa
{
[XmlElement("bb")]
public bb[] bbs;
}
public class bb
{
[XmlElement("name")]
public string Name;
}
By putting the Array and ArrayItem attributes in, you were explicitly describing how to serialize this as an array with a wrapping container.
Change your [XmlArray]/[XmlArrayItem] to [XmlElement], which tells the serializer the elements have no wrapper, e.g.
[XmlRoot("aa")]
public class aa
{
[XmlElement("bb")]
public bb[] bbs;
}
public class bb
{
[XmlElement("name")]
public string Name;
}
I've got a simple class that inherits from Collection and adds a couple of properties. I need to serialize this class to XML, but the XMLSerializer ignores my additional properties.
I assume this is because of the special treatment that XMLSerializer gives ICollection and IEnumerable objects. What's the best way around this?
Here's some sample code:
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
namespace SerialiseCollection
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var c = new MyCollection();
c.Add("Hello");
c.Add("Goodbye");
var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyCollection));
using (var writer = new StreamWriter("test.xml"))
serializer.Serialize(writer, c);
}
}
[XmlRoot("MyCollection")]
public class MyCollection : Collection<string>
{
[XmlAttribute()]
public string MyAttribute { get; set; }
public MyCollection()
{
this.MyAttribute = "SerializeThis";
}
}
}
This outputs the following XML (note MyAttribute is missing in the MyCollection element):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<MyCollection xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<string>Hello</string>
<string>Goodbye</string>
</MyCollection>
What I want is
<MyCollection MyAttribute="SerializeThis"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<string>Hello</string>
<string>Goodbye</string>
</MyCollection>
Any ideas? The simpler the better. Thanks.
Collections generally don't make good places for extra properties. Both during serialization and in data-binding, they will be ignored if the item looks like a collection (IList, IEnumerable, etc - depending on the scenario).
If it was me, I would encapsulate the collection - i.e.
[Serializable]
public class MyCollectionWrapper {
[XmlAttribute]
public string SomeProp {get;set;} // custom props etc
[XmlAttribute]
public int SomeOtherProp {get;set;} // custom props etc
public Collection<string> Items {get;set;} // the items
}
The other option is to implement IXmlSerializable (quite a lot of work), but that still won't work for data-binding etc. Basically, this isn't the expected usage.
If you do encapsulate, as Marc Gravell suggests, the beginning of this post explains how to get your XML to look exactly like you describe.
http://blogs.msdn.com/youssefm/archive/2009/06/12/customizing-the-xml-for-collections-with-xmlserializer-and-datacontractserializer.aspx
That is, instead of this:
<MyCollection MyAttribute="SerializeThis"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Items>
<string>Hello</string>
<string>Goodbye</string>
<Items>
</MyCollection>
You can have this:
<MyCollection MyAttribute="SerializeThis"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<string>Hello</string>
<string>Goodbye</string>
</MyCollection>
As Neil Whitaker suggests and in case his link dies..
Create an inner collection to store the strings and apply the XmlElement attribute to mask the collection name. Produces the same xml output as if MyCollection inherited from Collection, but also serializes attributes on the parent element.
[XmlRoot("MyCollection")]
public class MyCollection
{
[XmlAttribute()]
public string MyAttribute { get; set; }
[XmlElement("string")]
public Collection<string> unserializedCollectionName { get; set; }
public MyCollection()
{
this.MyAttribute = "SerializeThis";
this.unserializedCollectionName = new Collection<string>();
this.unserializedCollectionName.Add("Hello");
this.unserializedCollectionName.Add("Goodbye");
}
}
I've been fighting with the same issue Romaroo is (wanting to add properties to the xml serialization of a class that implements ICollection). I have not found any way to expose properties that are in the collection class. I even tried using the XmlAttribute tag and making my properties show up as attributes of the root node, but no luck there either. I was however able to use the XmlRoot tag on my class to rename it from "ArrayOf...". Here are some references in case you're interested:
MilkCarton.com
Microsoft Forum Posting
Diranieh - look halfway down
Sometimes you just want to do what you just want to do; the Framework be damned.
I posted an answer here Property of a List<T> Not Deserialized
that does what the OP wanted to do.
I have a class that looks like this
public class SomeClass
{
public SomeChildClass[] childArray;
}
which will output XML from the XMLSerializer like this:
<SomeClass>
<SomeChildClass>
...
</SomeChildClass>
<SomeChildClass>
...
</SomeChildClass>
</SomeClass>
But I want the XML to look like this:
<SomeClass>
<SomeChildClass index=1>
...
</SomeChildClass>
<SomeChildClass index=2>
...
</SomeChildClass>
</SomeClass>
Where the index attribute is equal to the items position in the array.
I could add an index property to SomeChildClass with the "XMLAttribute" attribute but then I would have to remember to loop through the array and set that value before I serialize my object.
Is there some attribute i can add or some other way to automatically generate the index attribute for me?
The best approach would be to do what you said and add a property to the "SomeChildClass" like this
[XmlAttribute("Index")]
public int Order
{ { get; set; } }
Then however you are adding these items to your array, make sure that this property get's set. Then when you serialize....Presto!
You may need to look into implementing System.Xml.Serialization.IXmlSerializable to accomplish this.
You can check XmlAttributeOverrides Class.