Develop Reference

Serializing ArrayList outputs ArrayOfAnyType

I do have a problem with serializing a ArrayList. Most propably I use wrong XML Attributes for it since I when I changed them it would not even serialize it and got errors like 'The type may not be used in this context.'
I need to use a non generic ArrayList. On adding [XmlArray("LineDetails")] made this code to run but the output is not correct, it should give me the LineDetails structure. Any idea how to fix this?
This is a part of a whole xml like Document > Header > LineCollection > LineDeatails.
The problem is only with this details if I use a standard string field it is ok but the range of the colletion if changing with every document.
[XmlType(TypeName = "LineCollection")]
public class LineCollection
{
public String LineCount{ get; set; }
// [XmlElement(ElementName = "LineDetails")]
[XmlArray("LineDetails")]
public ArrayList LineDetails{ get; set; }
}
public class LineDetails: ArrayList
{
public String LineNum{ get; set; }
public String ItemId{ get; set; }
public String ItemName{ get; set; }
//... only strings
}
public class Utf8StringWriter : StringWriter
{
public override Encoding Encoding => new UTF8Encoding(false);
}
public string Serialize()
{
// var xmlserializer = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());
var xmlserializer = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType(), new Type[] { typeof(LineDetails) });
var Utf8StringWriter = new Utf8StringWriter();
var xns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
xns.Add(string.Empty, string.Empty);
using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(Utf8StringWriter))
{
xmlserializer.Serialize(writer, this, xns);
return Utf8StringWriter.ToString();
}
}
And the incorrect output of this...
<LineColletion>
<LineDetails>
<anyType xmlns:p5="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" p5:type="ArrayOfAnyType"/>
<anyType xmlns:p5="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" p5:type="ArrayOfAnyType"/>
<anyType xmlns:p5="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" p5:type="ArrayOfAnyType"/>
</LineDetails>
</LineColletion>
it should be like this
<LineColletion>
<LineDetails>
<LineNum>1</LineNum>
<ItemId>Item_2321</ItemId>
<ItemName>TheItemName</ItemName>
</LineDetails>
<LineDetails>
<LineNum>2</LineNum>
<ItemId>Item_232100000</ItemId>
<ItemName>TheItemName0</ItemName>
</LineDetails>
<LineDetails>
<LineNum>3</LineNum>
<ItemId>Item_23217777</ItemId>
<ItemName>TheItemName7</ItemName>
</LineDetails>
</LineColletion>
Now the wrong xml looks like this...
<LineDetails>
<anyType xmlns:p5="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" p5:type="LineDetails">
<LineNum>1</LineNum>
<ItemId>Item_2321</ItemId>
<ItemName>TheItemName</ItemName>
</anyType>
<anyType xmlns:p5="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" p5:type="LineDetails">
<LineNum>2</LineNum>
<ItemId>Item_2321</ItemId>
<ItemName>TheItemName</ItemName>
</anyType>
</LineDetails>

You may generate the required XML by modifying your data model as follows:
[XmlType(TypeName = "LineColletion")] // Fixed: TypeName. But do you want LineColletion (misspelled) or LineCollection (correctly spelled)? Your XML shows LineColletion but your code used LineCollection.
public class LineCollection
{
public String LineCount{ get; set; }
[XmlElement("LineDetails", typeof(LineDetails))] // Fixed -- specify type(s) of items in the ArrayList.
public ArrayList LineDetails{ get; set; }
}
public class LineDetails // Fixed: removed inheritance from ArrayList.
{
public String LineNum{ get; set; }
public String ItemId{ get; set; }
public String ItemName{ get; set; }
//... only strings
}
Notes:
Your model makes LineDetails inherit from ArrayList. XmlSerializer will never serialize collection properties, it will only serialize collection items. In order to serialize it correctly, I removed the inheritance since you don't seem to be using it anyway.
If you really need LineDetails to inherit from ArrayList, you will need to implement IXmlSerializable or replace it collection with a DTO.
Implementing IXmlSerializable is tedious and error-prone. I don't recommend it.
Your LineDetails collection is serialized without an outer wrapper element. To make the serializer do this, apply XmlElementAttribute to the property.
ArrayList is an untyped collection, so you must inform XmlSerializer of the possible types it might contain. You have two options:
Assigning a specific type to a specific element name by setting XmlElementAttribute.Type (or XmlArrayItemAttribute.Type), OR
Adding xsi:type attributes by informing the serializer of additional included types. You are doing this by passing them into the constructor, which is why you are seeing the p5:type="LineDetails" attribute.
Since you don't want the attributes, you need to set the element name by setting the type like so:
[XmlElement("LineDetails", typeof(LineDetails))]
The XML element corresponding to your LineCollection is named <LineColletion>. Note that the spelling is inconsistent. You will need to set [XmlType(TypeName = "LineColletion")] to the name you actually want.
Demo fiddle here.

How to deserialize XML file with nested elements of same name, with one of elements are root?

I am trying to use the XmlSerializer class in C# to deserialize some XML that I am pulling from someone. Unfortunately, they have their root element named "Employee", and then the inner elements inside that root element are also named "Employee":
<Employee xmlns="http://www.testxmlns.com/employee">
<Employee>
<OtherElement>OE</OtherElement>
...
</Employee>
<Employee>
<OtherElement>OE</OtherElement>
...
</Employee>
</Employee>
I was able to find another question that is very similar, but not exactly. Here is what my current object looks like:
[XmlType("Employee")]
[XmlRootAttribute(Namespace = "http://www.testxmlns.com/employee", IsNullable = true)]
public class Employee
{
[XmlElement("Employee")]
public Employee[] InnerEmployee;
[XmlElement("OtherElement")]
public String OtherElement;
...
}
When I run the following, everything seems to work (no exceptions thrown), but everything in the returned object is null, including the inner list of Employee objects, which should not be null based on the XML I am inputting:
Employee retObj;
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Employee));
using (TextReader sr = new StringReader(xmlString))
{
retObj = (Employee)serializer.Deserialize(sr);
}
return retObj;
Any help would be appreciated!

You can see in this fiddle that if I take your code and run it... it works!
What I would suggest, however, is to have two classes: one for the 'root' and one for each child element. This would make it less confusing to work with:
[XmlRoot("Employee", Namespace = "http://www.testxmlns.com/employee")]
public class EmployeeRoot
{
[XmlElement("Employee")]
public Employee[] Employees { get; set; }
}
public class Employee
{
public string OtherElement { get; set; }
}
You can see in this fiddle that this also works.

Deserialization XML to object with list in c#

I want to deserialize XML to object in C#, object has one string property and list of other objects.
There are classes which describe XML object, my code doesn't work (it is below, XML is at end of my post). My Deserialize code doesn't return any object.
I think I do something wrong with attributes, could you check it and give me some advice to fix it.
Thanks for your help.
[XmlRoot("shepherd")]
public class Shepherd
{
[XmlElement("name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[XmlArray(ElementName = "sheeps", IsNullable = true)]
[XmlArrayItem(ElementName = "sheep")]
public List<Sheep> Sheeps { get; set; }
}
public class Sheep
{
[XmlElement("colour")]
public string colour { get; set; }
}
There is C# code to deserialize XML to objects
var rootNode = new XmlRootAttribute();
rootNode.ElementName = "createShepherdRequest";
rootNode.Namespace = "http://www.sheeps.pl/webapi/1_0";
rootNode.IsNullable = true;
Type deserializeType = typeof(Shepherd[]);
var serializer = new XmlSerializer(deserializeType, rootNode);
using (Stream xmlStream = new MemoryStream())
{
doc.Save(xmlStream);
var result = serializer.Deserialize(xmlStream);
return result as Shepherd[];
}
There is XML example which I want to deserialize
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<createShepherdRequest xmlns="http://www.sheeps.pl/webapi/1_0">
<shepherd>
<name>name1</name>
<sheeps>
<sheep>
<colour>colour1</colour>
</sheep>
<sheep>
<colour>colour2</colour>
</sheep>
<sheep>
<colour>colour3</colour>
</sheep>
</sheeps>
</shepherd>
</createShepherdRequest>

XmlRootAttribute does not change the name of the tag when used as an item. The serializer expects <Shepherd>, but finds <shepherd> instead. (XmlAttributeOverrides does not seem to work on arrays either.) One way to to fix it, is by changing the case of the class-name itself:
public class shepherd
{
// ...
}
An easier alternative to juggling with attributes, is to create a proper wrapper class:
[XmlRoot("createShepherdRequest", Namespace = "http://www.sheeps.pl/webapi/1_0")]
public class CreateShepherdRequest
{
[XmlElement("shepherd")]
public Shepherd Shepherd { get; set; }
}

Serialization of array of xml elements already within a xmlAny Element

<Fruits>
<FruitName>Amla</FruitName>
<FruitPrice>10 US DOLLARS</FruitPrice>
<Origin>
<Country>INDIA</Country>
<NativeName>GOOSEBERRY</NativeName>
<Availability>PLENTY</Availability>
</Origin>
<OtherInfo>
<FiberPercentage>1.11</FiberPercentage>
<MagnesiumPercentage>0.02</MagnesiumPercentage>
</OtherInfo>
While De serializing the above XML structure, I use something like,
Xml
XmlElement("FruitsList")]
public List<Fruits> FruitsImport { get; set; }
In Fruits Class, I have something like:
[XmlAnyElement]
public List<XmlElement> FruitElements { get; set; }
[XmlElement("Origin")]
public List<XmlElement> FruitOrigin { get; set; }
[XmlElement("OtherInfo")]
public List<XmlElement> OtherInfo { get; set; }
FruitElement retrieves the FruitName and FruitPrice.
FruitOrigin retrives Country Info alone.
OtherInfo retrives FiberPercentage alone.
Any ideas on how to get all the info under <Origin> and <OtherInfo> tags ?

Because you have elements nested in both <origin> and <otherinfo> tags, you need to define a class for them as well when performing deserialization.
[XmlElement("Origin")]
public List<Origins> FruitOrigin { get; set; }
You would define the origin class the same way as you did for fruit class.
(The skeleton of Origin class would be something as below:
[Serializable]
public class Origin
{
[XmlAnyElement]
public List<XmlElement> OriginElements { get; set; }
}
)

The best way is to write XSD schema for the XML and generate class from XSD schema using XSD.exe, this way you can validate that always XML and class matches to XSD and never have issue with Serialization/ Deserialization.
You can create batch file like below to generate class from xsd schema:
del Configuration.AutoGenerated.cs
"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\xsd" Test.Configuration.xsd /c /n:Test.Configuration
rename Test_Configuration.cs Configuration.AutoGenerated.cs
pause
You can see more usage examples at above link for XSD.exe.
It will generate partial classes so you can easily extend it further if required.

How to XmlDeserialize using RestSharp?

I'm having trouble deserializing the following XML w/ restsharp
<Xid>
<Id>118</Id>
<Active>true</Active>
<Xid>20</Xid>
<CreatedDate>2011-09-16T18:15:32</CreatedDate>
<CreatedUserId>1782</CreatedUserId>
<ModifiedDate>2011-09-16T18:15:32</ModifiedDate>
<ModifiedUserId>1782</ModifiedUserId>
<TableName>ProjectRate</TableName>
<ObjectId>644</ObjectId>
<SystemGuid>157f2e2d-5e8b-41c7-b932-09c1d75d0ccc</SystemGuid>
</Xid>
I can't use a class named 'Xid' with a member named 'Xid' as there is a conflict in C#. I have tried manually declaring the XmlRoot on the XidClass object, but it doesn't seem to be getting picked up by RestSharp's deserializer. Is there a way to do this with RestSharp, or am I going to need to write a custome deserializer for this particular chunk of xml?

You need to create the class by hand, befoe you can deserialize the XML:
public class Xid
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public bool Active { get; set; }
public int Xid { get; set; }
...
}
The you should be able to deserialize using something like:
Xid xid = xml.Deserialize<Xid>(response);
(Have a look here: Testing the Deserialization of RestSharp without proper REST-Api)