Automatically created C# classes for xml deserialization don't work

Question

I am struggling to create deserialization classes for this xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:stn="urn:response">
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <Response>
            <Records xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array" SOAP-ENC:arrayType="stn:Record[1]">
                <item xsi:type="stn:Record">
                    <person xsi:type="xsd:string">John Johnos</person>
                    <address xsi:type="xsd:string">Some Street 1</address>
                    <age xsi:type="xsd:string">24</age>
                </item>
            </Records>
            <status xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array" SOAP-ENC:arrayType="stn:status[1]">
                <item xsi:type="stn:status">
                    <status xsi:type="xsd:string">success</status>
                    <message xsi:type="xsd:string"/>
                </item>
            </status>
        </Response>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

I have tried to use automatically created code (in VisualStudio 12: Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste XML as Classes):

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true, Namespace = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(Namespace = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/", IsNullable = false)]
public partial class Envelope
{

    private EnvelopeBody bodyField;

    private string encodingStyleField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public EnvelopeBody Body
    {
        get
        {
            return this.bodyField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.bodyField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Qualified)]
    public string encodingStyle
    {
        get
        {
            return this.encodingStyleField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.encodingStyleField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true, Namespace = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/")]
public partial class EnvelopeBody
{

    private Response responseField;

    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Namespace = "")]
    public Response Response
    {
        get
        {
            return this.responseField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.responseField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true)]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(Namespace = "", IsNullable = false)]
public partial class Response
{

    private ResponseRecords recordsField;

    private ResponseStatus statusField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public ResponseRecords Records
    {
        get
        {
            return this.recordsField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.recordsField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    public ResponseStatus status
    {
        get
        {
            return this.statusField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.statusField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true)]
public partial class ResponseRecords
{

    private ResponseRecordsItem itemField;

    private string arrayTypeField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public ResponseRecordsItem item
    {
        get
        {
            return this.itemField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.itemField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Qualified, Namespace = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/")]
    public string arrayType
    {
        get
        {
            return this.arrayTypeField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.arrayTypeField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true)]
public partial class ResponseRecordsItem
{

    private string personField;

    private string addressField;

    private byte ageField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public string person
    {
        get
        {
            return this.personField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.personField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    public string address
    {
        get
        {
            return this.addressField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.addressField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    public byte age
    {
        get
        {
            return this.ageField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.ageField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true)]
public partial class ResponseStatus
{

    private ResponseStatusItem itemField;

    private string arrayTypeField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public ResponseStatusItem item
    {
        get
        {
            return this.itemField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.itemField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Qualified, Namespace = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/")]
    public string arrayType
    {
        get
        {
            return this.arrayTypeField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.arrayTypeField = value;
        }
    }
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true)]
public partial class ResponseStatusItem
{

    private string statusField;

    private object messageField;

    /// <remarks/>
    public string status
    {
        get
        {
            return this.statusField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.statusField = value;
        }
    }

    /// <remarks/>
    public object message
    {
        get
        {
            return this.messageField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.messageField = value;
        }
    }
}

I tried to deserialize with help of XMLSerializer:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Envelope));
var reader = new StringReader(response);
var flResponse = (Envelope)serializer.Deserialize(reader);

The error message I got:

Message=The specified type was not recognized: name='Array', namespace='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/', at <Records xmlns=''>.

Could you please help me to greate deserialization classes for this xml?

can you show your Envelope class? Or this auto-generated Envelope class is the one you used in XML Serializer? — Angloos, Dec 10 '15 at 05:09
If you just want to fix the XML that was created, you might look at [this example](http://siderite.blogspot.com/2014/01/deserializingserializing-xml-that.html). It looks like the xsi:type attributes cause some weird behavior. — DHP, Dec 11 '15 at 21:00
Where do you get the XML documents from? Do you get it from a WSDL service? — Sergii Zhevzhyk, Dec 15 '15 at 10:04

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 14 '15 at 09:08

I tried a lot of thing and finaly figured it out. Xml you posted is invalid because xsi:type doesn't work in deserialization.

Valid XML should look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:stn="urn:response">
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <Response>
            <Records>
                <item>
                    <person >John Johnos</person>
                    <address >Some Street 1</address>
                    <age >24</age>
                </item>
            </Records>
            <status>
                <item>
                    <status >success</status>
                    <message/>
                </item>
            </status>
        </Response>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Code then should look like:

XDocument xml = XDocument.Parse(xmlInput);

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Response));

using (StringReader stream = new StringReader(items[0].ToString()))
{
    var output = (Response)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
}

Autogenerate class will be from:

<Response>
  <Records  xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <item>
      <person>John Johnos</person>
      <address >Some Street 1</address>
      <age>24</age>
    </item>
  </Records>
  <status xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <item >
      <status >success</status>
      <message />
    </item>
  </status>
</Response>

Hope this is clear enough. Not sure how to get rid of types from Envelope so, this is probably not the solution you want.

Method i use for getting things from Envelope is XDocument.Descendants(elemmentName) which return array or List of elements of that name and then you can fill objects. Its more work, but i think its better than transforming xml for deserialization.

Hi. Thank you for investigation. This is actually what I have done at the end: searched through the xml and deleted all annoying parts and deserialize clean XML afterwards. But I don't think this is right for production system. This is too dirty to just string.Replace() things. The XML I have is not the one I can controll. It is a third-party service I have to use. — Belurd, Dec 14 '15 at 09:53
Same time, I think it is possible to deserialize with this xsi:type, but I don't really know how :-( — Belurd, Dec 14 '15 at 09:58
try the `XDocument.Descendants(elemmentName)` for example `XDocument.Descendants("item")` gets you array of strings and then you can use `item.Descendants("person").FirstOrDefault().Value` which gets you `John Johnos` — Slasko, Dec 14 '15 at 10:01

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '15 at 16:50

5

Why not generate a serialization library for the entire schema?

Download the XSD schema file from the URL in the message and save it somewhere

http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/
Open a Visual Studio Command Prompt and enter the following command

xsd /classes SoapEncoding.xsd
The output will be a file titled SoapEncoding.cs.
Import this file into your project and try to deserialize the message again.

If all goes well, everything should work this time around.

answered Dec 08 '15 at 16:50

Randy

2,270
1
15
24

1

I have tried this way. It did not worked. Furthermore, ask for help of my colleagues and we could not find what is wrong all together. – Belurd Dec 09 '15 at 08:01
1

The approach I suggested about should work. Could you provide some details as to what errors you are getting using my approach? – Randy Dec 10 '15 at 19:54

Automatically created C# classes for xml deserialization don't work

2 Answers2

Linked