TRICKY Question about List to XML

Question

I have a tricky question regarding shallow serialization of List of objects

my entities

public class Requests
{
    public string Action { get; set; }
    public Meta MetaType { get; set; }

}

public class Meta
{
    public string MerchantId { get; set; }
    public string IpAddress { get; set; }
    public string Version { get; set; }
}

Shallow serialization using XMLSerializer

    List<Requests> lstXML = new List<Requests>();

    Requests xml = new Requests();
    xml.Action = "INSERT";
    xml.MetaType = new Meta { IpAddress = "192.2.3.4", MerchantId = "DALE", Version = "1" };
    lstXML.Add(xml);
    xml = new Requests();
    xml.Action = "UPDATE";
    xml.MetaType = new Meta { IpAddress = "192.2.3.40", MerchantId = "SECD", Version = "1" };
    lstXML.Add(xml);


    using (var sw = new StreamWriter(@"C:\XML\test.txt"))
    {
        var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Requests>));
        serializer.Serialize(sw, lstXML);

    }

output textfile text.txt

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <ArrayOfRequests xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"                  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <Requests>
  <Action>INSERT</Action>
   <MetaType>
  <MerchantId>DALE</MerchantId>
  <IpAddress>192.2.3.4</IpAddress>
  <Version>1</Version>
</MetaType>
   </Requests>
 <Requests>
<Action>UPDATE</Action>
<MetaType>
  <MerchantId>SECD</MerchantId>
  <IpAddress>192.2.3.40</IpAddress>
  <Version>1</Version>
</MetaType>
     </Requests>
    </ArrayOfRequests>

now my problem is

1) I need to remove the < ?XML version="1.0" ....> and the < ArrayOfRequests ...> tag and retain only the XML tag of my Entities. How can I do that?

2) How can I CAPITALIZE(CAPS) the Element Name ( -> ) in the output textfile?

my desired textfile output would be

<XML>
 <REQUESTS>
 <ACTION>INSERT</ACTION>
 <META>
   <MERCHANTID>DALE</MERCHANTID>
   <IPADDRESS>202.164.178.163</IPADDRESS>
   <VERSION>1</VERSION>
 </META>
 <REQUESTS>

 <REQUESTS>
 <ACTION>INSERT</ACTION>
 <META>
   <MERCHANTID>DALE</MERCHANTID>
   <IPADDRESS>202.164.178.163</IPADDRESS>
   <VERSION>1</VERSION>
 </META>
 <REQUESTS>

 </XML>

Thanks in advance guys! =)

You'd have more success if you asked the two separate questions, as separate questions! — Ray Hayes, Mar 26 '11 at 15:16
The `` tag is mandatory, without it your XML document isn't valid... — Thomas Levesque, Mar 26 '11 at 15:21
And anyway, you can only have 1 root element, so with the format you want the document can't contain more than 1 Requests object — Thomas Levesque, Mar 26 '11 at 15:23
my bad actualy the root element would be and yes there would be more than 1 request tag — CSharpNoob, Mar 26 '11 at 15:29

Bala R · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-26T16:05:36.090

3

Try

[XmlType("REQUESTS")]  
public class Requests
{
    [XmlElement(ElementName="ACTION")]
    public string Action { get; set; }

    [XmlElement(ElementName="META")]
    public Meta MetaType { get; set; }
    ...

}

public class Meta
{

    [XmlElement(ElementName="MERCHANTID")]
    public string MerchantId { get; set; }
    ...
}

and

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Requests>), new XmlRootAttribute("XML"));

edited Mar 26 '11 at 16:05

answered Mar 26 '11 at 15:25

Bala R

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thanks! works fine except for the Root Element, doesnt appear on the textfile... – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 15:55
do you have "XML" as the second parameter to the XmlSerializer? – Bala R Mar 26 '11 at 15:57
yup var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List), "XML"); – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:00
the "XML" is in the element. – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:00
what appears as the root element then? – Bala R Mar 26 '11 at 16:01
the "XML" goes to the xmlns attribute of the tag – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:03
root element is – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:03
@CSharpNoob my bad. check out my edit on the last line. it should be new XmlRootAttribute("XML") instead of just "XML" – Bala R Mar 26 '11 at 16:06
thanks much, it works, however it still has the xmlns:xsi attribute.... , is there anyway to remove that attributes without manually manipulating the string of the textfile? I just need tag, thanks much – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:10
1

@CSharpNoob check out this post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/625927/omitting-all-xsi-and-xsd-namespaces-when-serializing-an-object-in-net – Bala R Mar 26 '11 at 16:12
thank you very much dude! save a lot of work, it's 12am here i can finally go home =) – CSharpNoob Mar 26 '11 at 16:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '11 at 15:22

So, you don't want XML serialization. You want a custom approximation of it. Therefore, you're probably going to have to write it yourself. Are you using any kind of templating language? If you know the types that you'll be serializing up-front, a templating system will help you immensely. If you don't know the types beforehand, next answer please.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 26 '11 at 15:25

The absolute simplest solution would probably to process the string, as currently generated, with a couple of post-processing steps:

// Stream to a string instead of directly to the file
yourString = // stream XML here.

// Remove the xmlns stuff.
yourString = yourString.Replace(
          " xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\"", 
          ""); 

// Upper-case the start-elements and end-elements (your data has no attributes, 
// so keep it simple)
yourString = Regex.Replace(yourString, 
                           "<\{0,1}([^>]+)>", 
                           delegate(Match m) 
                           {
                               return m.Value.ToUpper(); 
                           });

thanks for answering the 2nd question, I also think its the only solution since XmlSerializer automatically creates the xmlns captions... — CSharpNoob, Mar 26 '11 at 15:57

TRICKY Question about List to XML

3 Answers3