Question

I am having trouble finding why the following XML won’t deserialize.

Message:

There is an error in XML document (23, 26).

Inner exception:

Input string was not in a correct format.

Calling Code (works without issue on everything except the XML below):

Public Shared Function DeserializeObject(Of T)(ByVal serializedXml As String) As T
    Dim serializer As New XmlSerializer(GetType(T))

    Using strReader As New IO.StringReader(serializedXml)
        Return DirectCast(serializer.Deserialize(strReader), T)
    End Using

End Function

XML (looks ok – issue is after the first open square bracket of DiscountCode):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<MyResponse>
    <Shoppinglist>
        <ShoppinglistName>ShoppingListName</ShoppinglistName>
        <Currency>GBP</Currency>
        <PriceType>Retail</PriceType>
        <Orders>
            <Order>
                <OrderLineId>Test</OrderLineId>
                <Completed>false</Completed>
                <Description>Other Item</Description>
                <Quantity>1</Quantity>
                <Parts>
                    <Part>
                        <PartId>43543543435</PartId>
                        <Description>Cylinder Assy - Master</Description>
                        <PriceInclTax>92.16</PriceInclTax>
                        <PriceExclTax>76.8</PriceExclTax>
                        <Quantity>1</Quantity>
                        <TaxRate>20.0</TaxRate>
                        <NetDiscountCode>ZZ</NetDiscountCode>
                        <SurchargeQuantity>1.0</SurchargeQuantity>
------------->          <DiscountRate>0.0</DiscountRate>
                    </Part>
                </Parts>
            </Order>
        </Orders>
    </Shoppinglist>
    <ReturnCode>1</ReturnCode>
    <StatusMessage>Open tasks exist</StatusMessage>
</MyResponse>

Can anyone see what is wrong?

Stack trace (for outer exception):

 at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(XmlReader xmlReader, String encodingStyle, XmlDeserializationEvents events)
 at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(TextReader textReader)

Stack trace for inner exception:

 at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer& number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)    
 at System.Number.ParseInt32(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)    
 at System.Xml.XmlConvert.ToInt32(String s)    

Which is strange, as it looks like it is parsing to Int, when it should be parsing to decimal…

property for class T:

Protected _DiscountRate As Decimal
Public Property DiscountRate() As Decimal
    Get
        Return _DiscountRate
    End Get
    Set(ByVal Value As Decimal)
        _DiscountRate = Value
    End Set
End Property

I added the following, but it didn’t make any difference:

<System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElement(Type:=GetType(Decimal))> _

I doubt this is to do with strange characters as I can’t see any. Also changing the type to Double does not work around the problem. Any other ideas?

Answer 1

It turns out the problem was with a property, however, I was so busy looking at what the error message was saying, I missed it. The error message pointed to the wrong property!