C# XML Serialization Attribute before class declaration

Question

I have this class

public class dtoObject : CommonBase
{
    [XmlArray("SomeItems"), XmlArrayItem("SomeItem")]
    public List<dtoSomeItem> SomeItems
    {
        get { return _SomeItems; }
        set { _SomeItems = value; }
    }
 }

and I would would like to use XML Serialization to make the XML string appear to be:

<Objects>
    <Object>
        <SomeItems>
            <SomeItem>
              1
            </SomeItem>
            <SomeItem>
              2
            </SomeItem>
        </SomeItems>
    </Object>
    <Object>
        <SomeItems>
            <SomeItem>
              3
            </SomeItem>
            <SomeItem>
              4
            </SomeItem>
        </SomeItems>
    </Object>
</Objects>

But for the life of me I cant figure out what to put before

public class dtoObject

in terms of Attributes, so that I get

<Objects><Object>...</Object><Object>...

when I serialize this.

Any ideas?

competent_tech · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-26 00:18:32Z

1

I don't think that you can do this with your object structure because the XML effectively declares a wrapper around the SomeItems collection. For example:

[XmlType("Objects")]
public class dtoObject : CommonBase
{
    [XmlElement("Object")]
    public List<dtoSomeItemWrapper> SomeItemsWrappers
    {
        get { return _SomeItemsWrappers; }
        set { _SomeItemsWrappers = value; }
    }
 }

class dtoSomeItemWrapper
{
    [XmlArray("SomeItems"), XmlArrayItem("SomeItem")]
    public List<dtoSomeItem> SomeItems
    {
        get { return _SomeItems; }
        set { _SomeItems = value; }
    }
}

edited Nov 26, 2011 at 0:18

answered Nov 25, 2011 at 23:43

competent_tech

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2 Comments

Jason Over a year ago

comptent_tech I appreciate the reply, but the xml string that gets generated is like this

<?xml version="1.0"?><ArrayOfDtoObject xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><dtoObject><SomeItems><SomeItem></SomeItem></SomeItems></dtoObject><dtoObject><SomeItems /></dtoObject><dtoObject><SomeItems><SomeItem></SomeItem><SomeItem></SomeItem></SomeItems></dtoObject></ArrayOfDtoObject>

competent_tech Over a year ago

@user1066353: Ok, updated the answer so that it should generate exactly what you need.

Aidan Ryan · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-27 20:28:56Z

Here is what I got to work. Thanks to comptent_tech and dthorpe for their help. I created my DTO like so:

[XmlType("Object", Namespace = "", TypeName = "Object")]
public class dtoObject : CommonBase   
{       
    [XmlArray("SomeItems"), XmlArrayItem("SomeItem")]       
    public List<dtoSomeItem> SomeItems       
    {
        get { return _SomeItems; }           
        set { _SomeItems = value; }       
    }    
}

My function that does the serializing is this:

public string ToXML(List<dtoObject> oObject)
{
    XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
    XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(oObject.GetType(), new XmlRootAttribute("Objects"));
    XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
    ns.Add("", "");

    using (MemoryStream xmlStream = new MemoryStream())
    {

        xmlSerializer.Serialize(xmlStream, oObject, ns);

        xmlStream.Position = 0;
        xmlDoc.Load(xmlStream);
        return xmlDoc.InnerXml;
    }
}

Doing this creates the xml format of:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <Objects>
        <Object>
            <SomeItems>
                <SomeItem>
                </SomeItem>
            </SomeItems>
        </Object>
    <Objects>

dthorpe · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-25 23:39:11Z

0

You'll need something like XmlRootAttribute("Object", Namespace="", IsNullable=false) in front of the class declaration. That tells the XML serializer to use the <Object> tag to represent the dtoObject in the XML text.

As for the <Objects> tag, you won't get that unless you are serializing an array of dtoObject. That is beyond the scope of the dtoObject type.

answered Nov 25, 2011 at 23:39

dthorpe

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3 Comments

Jason Over a year ago

dthorpe, thank you for the reply but when I add the Attribute like you suggested to my dtoObject class, the xml gets written to a string like this: <?xml version="1.0"?><ArrayOfDtoObject xmlns:xsi="w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><dtoObject>...

dthorpe Over a year ago

How are you serializing the object to xml? Are you using System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Save()?

Jason Over a year ago

I'm passing a List<dtoObject> to this function

public string ToXML(Object oObject) { XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument(); XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(oObject.GetType()); using (MemoryStream xmlStream = new MemoryStream()) { xmlSerializer.Serialize(xmlStream, oObject); xmlStream.Position = 0; xmlDoc.Load(xmlStream); return xmlDoc.InnerXml; } }

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