Serialization of Objects in ASP Web Method

Question

I have created an ASP Web Service (.asmx), through which a request with an SQL query is sent and the table is returned. Since the table structure is not known, I thought to have a generic schema with the column name and value for each field, grouped in a row and then the table object. What I mean is this xml to be returned:

<table>
  <row>
    <field>
      <colname>ID</colname>
      <value>32</value>
    </field>
    <field>
      ...
    </field>
  </row>
  <row>
     ...
  </row>
</table>

and for this I created a table object, a row object, and a field object, like this:

public class Table
{
    public Table()
    {
        Rows = new List<Row>();
    }

    public List<Row> Rows { get; set; }
}

public class Row
{
    public Row()
    {
        Fields = new List<Field>();
    }

    public List<Field> Fields { get; set; }
}

public class Field
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

and then I created the methods, which retrieve the data from the DB, and map them to the table object, and this is then returned to the web method, which automatically serializes it and outputs the xml file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Table xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"...>
  <Rows>
    <Row>
      <Fields>
        <Field>
          <Name>ID</Name>
          <Value>23</Value>
        </Field>
        <Field>
          ...
        </Field>
      </Fields>
    </Row>
    <Row>
      ...
    </Row>
  </Rows>
</Table>

The problem is however, that I'm not getting the output with the structure I need, but also the variable names, like the tags 'Rows' and 'Fields', which are not needed. I also tried having only the table object, without a Row object, but directly with List<List<Field>>, but then the output structure is <Table><Row><ArrayOfFields><Field>...

So, in conclusion, how should I create a DTO, in this case the Table object, so that the xml output is as shown in the beginning, <Table><Row><Field>...? I hope I was somewhat clear in my question. Thanks in advance.

This has nothing to do with classic-asp, perhaps you should re-tag this question properly. — user1945782
– user1945782, Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 11:54

Beemen · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-25 12:53:28Z

2

To do this, you need to apply custom serialization attributes to your classes and properties

For example

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRoot(ElementName = "table")]        
public class Table
{
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElement("row")]
    public Row[] Rows;
}

public class Row
{
    public string V;
}

This will remove the extra elements. You can look under System.Xml.Serialization namespace to solve the other issues.

answered Sep 25, 2014 at 12:53

Beemen

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2 Comments

stackoverflowthebest Over a year ago

nice, it worked, thanks a lot, it was driving me crazy. however I'm not sure I understand the logic behind. how do the custom attributes bind to the other object, eg. here, the "row" XmlElement avoids the name "Rows" of the variable, and skips to the Row object? one more question. if I change the service so that it gives an output in JSON, would these attributes still be effective?

Beemen Over a year ago

Great that it worked. Roughly, the reason is that the Row objects are serialized inside Table objects. Try serializing an array or Row objects directly and you will see something like <ArrayOfRow><Row> ..

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