Question

I am trying to figure out how to do XML serialization.

This is how I want my XML document too look like in the end

<course>
    <name></name>
    <backgroundColor></backgroundColor>
    <fontColor></fontColor>
    <sharingKey></sharingKey>
    <task id="">
        <taskName></taskName>
        <description></description>
    </task>
    <task id="">
        <taskName></taskName>
        <description></description>
    </task>
</course>

So far mine looks like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Course xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <name>name</name>
  <backgroundColor>test</backgroundColor>
  <fontColor>test2</fontColor>
  <sharingKey>9324bfab-6cc7-49e5-84f7-56130b8dc099</sharingKey>
  <task id="first Task" />
  <task id="Second task" />
</Course>

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    [XmlRoot("Course")]
    public class MyWrapper 
    {
        public MyWrapper()
        {
            TaskList = new List<Tasks>();
        }

        [XmlElement("name")]
        public string Name { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("backgroundColor")]
        public string BackgroundColor { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("fontColor")]
        public string  FontColor { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("sharingKey")]
        public Guid SharingKey { get; set; }

        [XmlElement("task")]
        public List<Tasks> TaskList { get; set; }

    }


    public class Tasks
    {
        [XmlAttribute("id")]
        public string Id { get; set; }
    }

}


using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.IO;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            Tasks task = new Tasks();
            task.Id = "first Task";

            Tasks task2 = new Tasks();
            task2.Id = "Second task";

            MyWrapper wrap = new MyWrapper();
            wrap.BackgroundColor = "test";
            wrap.FontColor = "test2";
            wrap.Name = "name";
            wrap.SharingKey = Guid.NewGuid();

            wrap.TaskList.Add(task);
            wrap.TaskList.Add(task2);

            SerializeToXML(wrap);
        }

        static public void SerializeToXML(MyWrapper list)
        {
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyWrapper));


       TextWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(@"C:\New folder\test.xml");
        serializer.Serialize(textWriter, list);
        textWriter.Close();
    }
}

}

So my question is with the “id” for the task.

All I have is another class with this in it

[XmlAttribute("id")]
public string Id { get; set; }

How did it know to put this attribute in the task tag?

What happens if I wanted to have another property

[XmlElement()]
public string TaskName {get; set;}

Say I wanted to have an attribute with this element how would I make sure that the attribute would be with TaskName not with Task?

Answer 1

[XmlElement("task")]
public List<Tasks> TaskList { get; set; }

This part of your code told it to serialize every Tasks object in an element called “task”. The serializer looks at the properties on the Tasks class and finds the Id property which you marked with [XmlAttribute("id")] so it gets serialized as an attribute to the “task” element for the object.

I’m not sure I understand your second question. You cannot add an attribute to the element because its type is a string. Instead you would have to create a new class to wrap the concept of a task name which would have a name property and whatever other properties you wanted to add to it.