CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netxmlxml-serialization
David Bonnici
David Bonnici

Reputation: 6747

.NET XML Deserialization

I have the following XML feed. I need to do deserialization to a List of objects. How can I achieve this in .NET 4.0 C#?

<body>
  <games>
     <sports>
       <lot_name>Football</lot_name>
       <prizes>
           <!-- For each prize the "division_" tag ends with different number -->
           <divisions_1>
              <divisions>1</divisions>
              <match>5-2</match>
              <pay>$10</pay>
           </divisions_1>
           <divisions_2>
              <divisions>2</divisions>
              <match>3-2</match>
              <pay>$5</pay>
          </divisions_2>
       </prizes>
     </sports>
  </games>
</body>

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2560

Answers (3)

Huusom
Huusom

Reputation: 5912

Unless you want to generate a XSD with N division_x elements where x = [1..N] you have to implement IXmlSerializable. The following code does deserialize the example xml nicely:

public class Sports : IXmlSerializable
{
    public string LotName { get; set; }

    public List<dynamic> Prices { get; set; }

    #region IXmlSerializable Members

    public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return null;
    }

    public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader)
    {
        Prices = new List<dynamic>();
        reader.Read();
        LotName = reader.ReadElementContentAsString("lot_name", "");
        reader.Read();
        while (reader.Name.StartsWith("divisions_"))
        {
            reader.Read();
            var i = reader.ReadElementContentAsString("divisions", "");
            var m = reader.ReadElementContentAsString("match", "");
            var p = reader.ReadElementContentAsString("pay", "");
            Prices.Add(new { ID = i, Match = m, Pay = p });
            reader.Read();
        }

    }

    public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    #endregion
}

public class Games  {
    [XmlElement("sports")]
    public Sports Sports { get; set; }
}


[XmlRoot("body")]
public class Body 
{
    [XmlElement("games")]
    public Games Games { get; set; }

}

It uses XmlSerialization because I am not quite sure how to do it with Data Contract Serializer (I know it can be done though). And you might want to add some error handling to the ReadXml method.

PS. You could do it with one class that implements XmlSerializer and emits a lot of dynamic classes :)

Upvotes: 0

Christoph Fink
Christoph Fink

Reputation: 23103

Take a look at THIS tutorial on how to do XML serialization, the example there is pretty near to yours.

Basically you need to create a class which represents each entity in your XML (e.g. Sports) and the corresponding properties and then us an XmlSerializer to deserialze it.

The more complex way, but where you can handle the strange <division_X> tags, would be to use an XmlReader and read in the elements on your own and assign it to appropriate classes/objects.

Upvotes: 0

CharithJ
CharithJ

Reputation: 47520

Look at here, a good explanation.

xsd.exe is a handy little tool that comes with the .NET SDK (Software Development Kit) that can make life easy when you want to quickly go from an XML input to a strongly-typed .NET object.

If you're starting with an XML file:

1) Open the XML file in Visual Studio

2) From the XML menu click "Create Schema". This will generate a XSD file.

The rest here.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions