If i have an xml of the form
<Details>
<Detail>
<Name1>Value1</Name1>
<Name2>Value2</Name2>
</Detail>
...
</Details>
And i define a class in my c# code for Detail and provide setters/getters for Name1, Name2 etc is there an api to directly read the xml and create Detail objects.
look at the XmlSerializer - this creates / parses xml from the shape of your object (so your property names need to match the attribute / element names in the xml).
If you need more control, you'll want to work with the newer Linq to XML API
XSD.exe can produce a class file for you based on an XSD or XML file, but if you aim it an an XML file, you'll need a pretty representative one (with multiple elements wherever there can be multiple elements), otherwise you'll need to tweak a few things. It's a good start though...
Linq to XML is pretty nice for this.
var details = from detail in document.Descendants("Detail")
select new Detail { Name1 = detail.Element("Name1").Value, Name2 = detail.Element("Name2").Value };
(This assumes you have defined a type called Detail, you could very well omit the Detail and obtain an anonymous type.)
This code will result in an IEnumarable<Detail> (or anon. type) that you can iterate over for your objects.
You could also use the DataContractSerializer.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.serialization.datacontractserializer.aspx
Use this code:
DetailList dl;
XmlSerializer xmls = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<DetailList>))
using (Stream fs = new FileStream(@"C:\path\to\file.xml", FileMode.Open))
dl = (DetailList)xmls.Deserialize(fs);
Make sure you have populated your classes with the correct attributes. Use
using System.Xml.Serialization;
// ...
[Serializable]
public class Detail
{
[XmlElement]
public string Name1 { get; set; }
[XmlElement]
public string Name2 { get; set; }
// REQUIRED: a parameterless constructor for XmlSerializer (can be private)
private Detail(){}
public Detail(string name1, string name2)
{
Name1 = name1;
Name2 = name2;
}
}
[Serializable, XmlRoot("Details")]
public class DetailList : List<Detail>
{
}
new XmlSerializer(typeof(Deatil))XSD.exe to create a C# class from the XML file - see this post for details.Use XmlSerializer to deserialize the class:
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Details));
using (var fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open))
{
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(fs);
var result = (Details)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
}
