XmlSerializer - Present an array of items

Question

I have an XML File that looks like this :

<ROOT><DOC> ... </DOC><DOC> ... </DOC><DOC> ... </DOC></ROOT>

I want to put all the DOC in an array. How do I do that in C# (XmlSerializer) ?

Answer 1

Maybe it depends on the framework version. I have .net v4 and would use the following class with XmlSerializer.

Thanks to @Reniuz for the hint of the error. Here is a full working example:

public class Document
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

[XmlRoot("ROOT")]
public class Root
{
    [XmlElement("DOC")]
    public List<Document> Documents { get; set; }
}

Using this code to load:

string data = "<ROOT><DOC Value=\"adhfjasdhf\"></DOC><DOC Value=\"asldfhalsdh\"></DOC></ROOT>";
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Root));
using (StringReader sr = new StringReader(data))
{
    Root root = serializer.Deserialize(sr) as Root;
}

Keep attantion that the tags are case sensitive.

Answer 2

In essence, you need a string that contains your XML, a StringReader to read the string, an XMLReader to read the feed from the StringReader and an XDocument to store the feed from the XMLReader. This can be done in a single line of code, like this:

XDocument xDoc = XDocument.Load (XmlReader.Create (new StringReader (xmlString)));

The xmlString is the path (and name) of the file you're reading. You should use a List to store the data you'll get (unless it's a set number, then you can just use a string[]).

List<string> docList = new List<string>();

Then it's a matter of using a foreach loop to go through the XML elements and adding them to your list:

foreach (var element in xDoc.Descendants("ROOT"))
{
    string doc = element.Element ("DOC").Value;
    docList.Add (doc);
}

to make it an array, use:

docList.ToArray();

I hope this helps! Good luck.

Answer 3

This is the right answer, based on Magicbjorn answer :

First of all, i'm getting my string from a StreamReader.

    using(StreamReader read = new StreamReader("FilePath.xml"))
    {
        XDocument xDoc = XDocument.Load(XmlReader.Create(read));
        List<string> docList = new List<string>();

        var root = xDoc.Element("ROOT");
        foreach (var element in root.Elements("DOC"))
        {
            string s = element.Value;
            docList.Add(s);
        }
    }