XmlSerialize Class to CDATA

Question

Due to one of the interfaces we are writing for, we have to add a CDATA tag for a list of classes.

    <modules>
        <![CDATA[<module>
            <title></title>
            <code></code>
            <level></level>
            <year></year>
            <summary></summary>
        </module>
          <module>
            <title></title>
            <code></code>
            <level></level>
            <year></year>
            <summary></summary>
        </module>]]>
    </modules>

I'm unsure how to achieve this. I have found questions around individual strings, but not so much around an entire class. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Would it work in a two-step process where you serialize the list of "modules" to XML and then add the result *as string* to the `` node? — Hans Keﬆing, Aug 13 '20 at 09:41
Does [Wrap properties with CData Section - XML Serialization C#](https://stackoverflow.com/q/34128757/3744182) answer your question? The answer shows how to use nested serialization to embed serialized XML in a CDATA section. — dbc, Aug 13 '20 at 16:04

MBB · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-14T07:37:13.870

One of the ways to get the output you are expecting is to separate the creation of the module data and generating the CDATA part. For example:

To create the module data -

Create a class to hold module details as below -

public class Module
{
    public string title { get; set; }
    public string code { get; set; }
    public string level { get; set; }
    public string summary { get; set; }
 }

Create a method to fetch these datails -

 public static string CreateXMLString()
   {
    List<Module> modules = new List<Module>();
    modules = new List<Module>() { new Module() { code = "test", 
    summary="Test3", title="Test", level = "tests1" },
                                       new Module() { code = "test3", 
    summary="Test3", title="Test3", level = "tests3" } };

        // Create XML to return the string in the format of 
        // <module code="test">
        //  < level > tests1 </ level >
        //  < summary > Test3 </ summary >
        //  < title > Test </ title >
        //</ module >< module code = "test3" >   
        //     < level > tests3 </ level >   
        //     < summary > Test3 </ summary >   
        //     < title > Test3 </ title >
        //   </ module >

      var modulesXml = 
          from mod in modules
          select new XElement("module",
        new XAttribute("code", mod.code),
        new XElement("level", mod.level),
        new XElement("summary", mod.summary),
        new XElement("title", mod.title)
       );

      return String.Concat(modulesXml);
    }

To get the CDATA you can use the below steps -

Create a class Modulesand refer the documentation for usages of CreateCDataSection and for similar threads here for the details

[XmlType("")]
public class Modules
{
 public Modules() { }

 [XmlIgnore]
 public string Message { get; set; }
 [XmlElement("modules")]
 public System.Xml.XmlCDataSection MyStringCDATA
 {
     get
     {
        return new System.Xml.XmlDocument().CreateCDataSection(Message);
     }
     set
     {
        Message = value.Value;
     }
 }
}

To test the output assign the string generated in step 2 during serialization you can refer the sample code below

static void Main(string[] args)
 {
   Modules mc = new Modules();
   mc.Message = CreateXMLString();//Assign your data created in step 2
   XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Modules));
   XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
   ns.Add("", "");
       
   StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();

    //Remove unnecessary namespaces
   serializer.Serialize(writer, mc,ns);
   var test = XDocument.Parse(writer.ToString());            
            
   var data = test.Root.Elements();              
            
   Console.WriteLine(data.FirstOrDefault().Value);

 }

Output -

<modules>
<![CDATA[<module>
  <code>test</code>
  <level>tests1</level>
  <summary>Test3</summary>
  <title>Test</title>
</module><module>
  <code>test3</code>
  <level>tests3</level>
  <summary>Test3</summary>
  <title>Test3</title>
</module>]]>
</modules>

XmlSerialize Class to CDATA

1 Answers1