Question

For a C# project I’m querying an API, which returns me an XML similar to this:

<itemlist>
  <item attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"... attrib15="Value15">
    <sometypeinfo1 attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"... attrib15="Value15">
      <subelement>
        <someproperty attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
        <someproperty attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
        <someproperty attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
      </subelement>
    </sometypeinfo1>
    <sometypeinfo2>
      <subelement attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2">
        <someproperty>
          <somedescription attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
          <somedescription attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
        </someproperty>
      </subelement>
    </sometypeinfo2>
    <sometypeinfo3 attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
    <sometypeinfo4>
      <someproperty attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
    </sometypeinfo4>
    <sometypeinfo5>
      <someproperty attrib="somevalue"/>
    </sometypeinfo5>
    <somemodifiers>
      <somemodifier attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
      <somemodifier attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
      <somemodifier attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"/>
    </somemodifiers>
    <someflags>
      <someflag attrib="somevalue"/>
      <someflag attrib="somevalue"/>
      <someflag attrib="somevalue"/>
    </someflags>
  </item>
  <item>
  .
  .
  .
  </item>
</itemlist>

Its basically a list with ~ 100 items/file and every one with alot of descriptions, attributes etc.
Now, thats not something unusual.
I have trouble mapping it into a class or dataset. For example this line

<sometypeinfo1 attrib1="Value1" attrib2="Value2"... attrib15="Value15">

One item may miss attrib1, another attrib2, a 3rd one may have all 15 etc.

Same with “Someflags”, there can be one item with 5 “someflag”s, the next one only with 2.
etc.
Every element or attribut CAN be there, but doesnt has to. So they all share a pool of elements/attribs, and this is where I get stuck with serialization etc.

Yes, I’m new to this. But from what I’ve learned so far, a schema has to have all elements/attribs to have the XML being mapped properly?

The only thing that comes to mind would be writing another tool that collects all possible elements etc., then writing a class that contains all, NULL everything in the first place and then just parse the XML, overwriting everything found in the actual item.

Answer 1

Most XML parsing tools represent the attributes of an element as a collection, and you can iterate over that collection.

they also represent child elements as a collection too.

Here’s some sample syntax using my XML parsing class of choice, but c# has multiple build in options that you can explore at your leisure.

        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load("myXML.xml");
        XmlNode node = doc.SelectSingleNode("//sometypeinfo1");

        foreach (XmlAttribute a in node.Attributes)
        {
            Console.Write(a.Name);
            Console.Write(a.Value);
        }

here’s a further documentation on XPATH that i used here.