Generate C# class from XML

Question

Can I generate a C# class from an XML file?

Possible duplicate of [How to generate .NET 4.0 classes from xsd?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5217665/how-to-generate-net-4-0-classes-from-xsd) — Wai Ha Lee, Jan 07 '19 at 17:03

score 477 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 13 '15 at 12:18

477

If you are working on .NET 4.5 project in VS 2012 (or newer), you can just Special Paste your XML file as classes.

Copy your XML file's content to clipboard
In editor, select place where you want your classes to be pasted
From the menu, select EDIT > Paste Special > Paste XML As Classes

edited Jun 13 '15 at 12:18

hdoghmen

3,175
4
29
33

answered Jun 26 '13 at 09:06

miszczu

5,025
2
16
19

29

I just wish this generated auto-implemented properties, like it does for "Paste JSON as Classes". Currently this means a 6 fold bloated code result, which is a lot harder to read. This alone makes me look for another tool, unfortunately. – Nicholas Petersen Aug 30 '13 at 14:21
1

Was this left out of VS 2013? – Roger Apr 07 '14 at 16:54
3

@Roger I haven't used VS 2013, but I think this feature should be there, make sure your project is targeting .NET 4.5 Framework – miszczu Apr 09 '14 at 09:38
2

This is much quicker than `xsd`, but the output is about the same. – Jess Jul 15 '14 at 17:25
I have only "Paste JSON as Classes" – Elaine Nov 06 '14 at 12:20
@Elaine are you sure you are working on NET 4.5 project? Your projects property 'Target framework' should be set to .NET Framework 4.5 – miszczu Nov 06 '14 at 14:59
@miszczu, it's just solved with pointing to any class in WCF project other than class library. – Elaine Nov 10 '14 at 05:52
1

This is soo helpfull! One addition: You must first create a class (like class1.cs and do the paste special in there. After this action, you can rename to the desired name. – real_yggdrasil Jan 18 '15 at 21:53
1

I would like the text *Copy your XML file to clipboard* to modified to **Copy your XML file's content to clipboard**. Because that way I was able to make it work. Else the option show as disabled. – Vikram Singh Saini Apr 06 '15 at 06:19
2

Awesome solution! On top of this if you have Resharper - CTRL+ALT+F (Full cleanup) also makes the generated code readable. – Oleg Jun 25 '15 at 22:07
1

as @Jess mentioned the output is nearly the same as running `xsd` -- I noticed pasting omits `XmlElementAttribute(Form = ...Unqualified)`; but I actually don't know if that matters... – drzaus Sep 18 '15 at 18:33
1

Hi @drzaus. Funny I was just using `xsd` the other day. This time it was very useful b/c the XML was huge and I can do schema validation. – Jess Sep 18 '15 at 19:21
1

good call @Jess, schema validation is an important point; also mentioned by Albin's answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/4203765/1037948 – drzaus Sep 18 '15 at 20:56
8

If you don't have resharper use regex replace with `public (\w+) (\w+)\r\n +\{\r\n +get\r\n +\{\r\n +return this.*;\r\n +\}\r\n +set\r\n +\{\r\n +this.*;\r\n +\}\r\n +\}\r\n` => `public $1 $2 { get; set; }` and ` private \w+ \w+Field;\r\n\r\n` – AlexDev May 18 '16 at 13:48
1

If you have an xsd file, open XML Schema Explorer window. Then right click to the root element and click Generate Sample Xml and do the above Special Paste. It works so simple. – Erdem ÖZDEMİR Feb 10 '17 at 13:19
It generates nice classes with many attributes correctly set as boolean, integer, float but it does not work properly in some cases. It sdoes not work for me when I have . The error using XML Deserialize is "MyElementA not defined" (or similar). Only using xsd.exe I have all the proper classes defined correctly and XML deserialization works. Unfortunately all the properties are set as string (you have just to change the type manually in the generated class) and many elelemts are defined as array (again manual changes to have only one element). – Alex 75 Jan 22 '18 at 11:35
1

There is minor difference to XSD output. Special Paste generate numbers automatically, xsd.exe not. – Tomas Kubes Oct 24 '18 at 14:47
this is nice and easy but say that you are getting xml reply from some http call. And in that particular xml a certain values are always 2 digit (for sake of example) the "paste" will make that field `byte` or `short`. And then one day, you call the rest api and in you get a well formed xml, but that value is all of sudden 123456789. I think everyone gets where I'm going ;) – cantSleepNow Jun 23 '20 at 13:03

score 369 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 24 '18 at 14:34

369

Yes, by using xsd.exe

D:\temp>xsd test.xml
Microsoft (R) Xml Schemas/DataTypes support utility
[Microsoft (R) .NET Framework, Version 4.0.30319.1]
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Writing file 'D:\temp\test.xsd'.

D:\temp>xsd test.xsd /classes
Microsoft (R) Xml Schemas/DataTypes support utility
[Microsoft (R) .NET Framework, Version 4.0.30319.1]
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Writing file 'D:\temp\test.cs'.

Notes

Answer how to change directory in Developer Command Prompt to d:\temp may be useful.

If you generate classes for multi-dimensional array, there is a bug in XSD.exe generator, but there are workarounds.

edited Oct 24 '18 at 14:34

Tomas Kubes

23,880
18
111
148

answered Nov 17 '10 at 10:41

Darin Dimitrov

1,023,142
271
3,287
2,928

19

To use `xsd` run the **Developer Command Prompt for VS2013** under your tools menu. – Jess Jul 15 '14 at 17:21
14

`xsd.exe` can be found under: `C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows` – Julian Aug 14 '14 at 11:52
8

be warned if you have a large complex XML file the class generated will be so ugly that it will almost be unusable ;) – Matthew Lock May 07 '16 at 08:43
4

For me `xsd.exe` was found at: `C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.1 Tools` – user1991179 May 31 '17 at 01:08
1

I have a 7GB XML file (it is being used as a human-readable transform of a binary data transfer mechanism in this case) and xsd.exe runs out of memory trying to read that pretty quickly. Note that this is not an out of memory condition on the machine itself; there is plenty of RAM in this machine (192GB) and xsd.exe uses no more than 4 before it dies. So this solution won't be the answer for everyone. – Naikrovek May 25 '21 at 15:57
@Naikrovek Yeah and XML is not for everything. :) – Anssi Oct 26 '21 at 07:13

score 62 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 15 '16 at 15:37

62

At first I thought the Paste Special was the holy grail! But then I tried it and my hair turned white just like the Indiana Jones movie.

But now I use http://xmltocsharp.azurewebsites.net/ and now I'm as young as ever.

Here's a segment of what it generated:

namespace Xml2CSharp
{
    [XmlRoot(ElementName="entry")]
    public class Entry {
        [XmlElement(ElementName="hybrisEntryID")]
        public string HybrisEntryID { get; set; }
        [XmlElement(ElementName="mapicsLineSequenceNumber")]
        public string MapicsLineSequenceNumber { get; set; }

answered Jun 15 '16 at 15:37

D. Kermott

1,613
17
24

9

The output of this tool is nice, but I just want to make throw a word of caution out there not to submit any sensitive data to this site (or any other for that matter). While I appreciate the service that is offered, there is no privacy policy and little to no assurance that what you paste won't be logged and examined, etc. – SvenAelterman Jul 04 '16 at 02:56
2

I had an xml file that has some recursive relations (maybe it's called circular relation, I'm not sure.) The others failed but http://xmltocsharp.azurewebsites.net/ was very successful on that xml. – Koray Sep 29 '16 at 09:56
4

@D.Kermott thanks for the website link, I've had a quick look at it and it looks like it does a much better job than the paste special, the code looks cleaner, though my test xml created more classes, it was much nicer to use. – Harag Feb 04 '17 at 11:26
Pity it seems to invert the order of classes (outside elements listed last) – Savage Jan 16 '20 at 14:34
1

Just want to point out that this tool doesn't properly set the [Form property](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.xml.serialization.xmlattributeattribute.form?view=net-6.0) of the `XmlElement` attribute. This make the standard .NET xml serializer fail silently (no error, but creates an empty object). So if the xml mix elements with and without namespaces, you will need to update the code accordingly. The xsd.exe tool handles this properly. – colinD Dec 17 '21 at 21:51

score 22 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 11 '22 at 18:18

22

I had the same problem as you so I decided to write my own program.

The problem with the "xml -> xsd -> classes" route for me was that it just generated a lump of code that was completely unmaintainable and I ended up turfing it.

It is in no way elegant but it did the job for me. You can get it here: SimpleXmlToCode

Please make suggestions if you like it.

edited Aug 11 '22 at 18:18

StayOnTarget

11,743
10
52
81

answered Mar 05 '13 at 05:21

Talon

3,466
3
32
47

1

produces wrong code: // ELEMENTS [XmlIgnore] public DateTime Value { get; set; } [XmlText] public string ValueString { get { return Value ? "true" : "false"; } set { Value = value == "true"; } } – André Fiedler Sep 02 '14 at 13:10
And the constructors are unnecessary + you should include comments for publicly visible members – André Fiedler Sep 02 '14 at 13:12
1

In my defense it was something I slapped together very quickly which worked for me. I haven't gone back to it but feel free to contribute to the repo any changes. – Talon Sep 03 '14 at 13:38
1

I've been using this for a few months - it's not perfect, but it's quite useful and I find it generates much more readable/simpler XML than VS2013's paste as XML. Much appreciated Talon. – codechinchilla Sep 29 '14 at 21:23

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

6

You should consider svcutil (svcutil question)

Both xsd.exe and svcutil operate on the XML schema file (.xsd). Your XML must conform to a schema file to be used by either of these two tools.

Note that various 3rd party tools also exist for this.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

1
1

answered Nov 17 '10 at 10:45

ng5000

12,330
10
51
64

score 6 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 17 '10 at 11:10

You can use xsd as suggested by Darin.

In addition to that it is recommended to edit the test.xsd-file to create a more reasonable schema.

type="xs:string" can be changed to type="xs:int" for integer values
minOccurs="0" can be changed to minOccurs="1" where the field is required
maxOccurs="unbounded" can be changed to maxOccurs="1" where only one item is allowed

You can create more advanced xsd-s if you want to validate your data further, but this will at least give you reasonable data types in the generated c#.

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 11 '17 at 15:22

2

Use below syntax to create schema class from XSD file.

C:\xsd C:\Test\test-Schema.xsd /classes /language:cs /out:C:\Test\

answered Sep 11 '17 at 15:22

Kiran.Bakwad

614
7
4

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 28 '21 at 17:22

1

Found this site a bit ago. It converts XML and JSON to C# and Java classes. Has several options to tweak as you need. I use it pretty often. https://json2csharp.com/xml-to-csharp

answered Sep 28 '21 at 17:22

Jeremy Hodge

612
3
14

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 14 '18 at 00:31

To convert XML into a C# Class:

Navigate to the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace: -- https://marketplace.visualstudio.com
In the search bar enter text: -- xml to class code tool
Download, install, and use the app

Note: in the fullness of time, this app may be replaced, but chances are, there'll be another tool that does the same thing.

Generate C# class from XML

9 Answers9

Linked

Related