Question

I am working with a custom report engine that uses XML and XSL to output the report data to the browser. Each report can have multiple parameters of different value types (integers, strings, dates).

Each report has its own class (inheriting from a base report class) and XSLT that gets the data from the DB based on the parameters, generates the xml, and styles it with the XSLT. However currently, the parameters are listed individually in each class. I think it is more efficient to create a Parameter class, have a generic list of all the parameters, add the parameters to the list when the report data is requested, then the base class can loop through the list of parameters and output the appropriate XML.

Here is what the code looks like now:

public class Report
{
    //Common functions used by all reports
}

public class OrderDetailReport : Report
{
    public long? Parameter1 { get; set; }
    public long? Parameter2 { get; set; }

    public XElement CreateXML()
    {
        var xml = new XElement();

        xml.Add(GetXMLParameters());

        //Get Data and generate XML

        return xml;
    }

    public XElement GetXMLParameters()
    {
        var parameters = new XElement("Parameters",
                            new XElement("Parameter",
                                    new XAttribute("Name", "Parameter1"),
                                    new XAttribute("Value", Parameter1)),
                            new XElement("Parameter",
                                    new XAttribute("Name", "Parameter2"),
                                    new Attribute("Value", Parameter2)));
        return parameters;
    }
}

What should the Parameter class look like so that it can handle all different value types and be able to format the value that is displayed on the screen?

EDIT:

I want to be able to move the GetXMLParameters() function to the base class and have a list something like List<Parameter> in the base that GetXMLParameters() will loop through and create the XML.

This will avoid having GetXMLParameters() in each CustomReport class.

Thanks. I hope this was clear.
Oran

Answer 1

take a look at serialization. There are many xml serializers in .net (wcf, xml etc) that will convert your objects for you. You can also shape the xml output by using attributes on the members you wish to serialise.

I offer up this solution because as long as your class can be serialized it will always work and allow for future growth.

AS REQUESTED:

public static class SerialiserHelper
{
        public static string Serialize(this object @object)
        {
            try
            {

               DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(@object.GetType());


                using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
                {

                    serializer.WriteObject(memoryStream, @object);

                    var encoder = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);

                    return encoder.GetString(memoryStream.GetBuffer(), 0, Convert.ToInt32(memoryStream.Length));
                }
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                throw e;
            }
        }



        public static T DeSerialize<T>(this string serializedObject)
        {
            DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));

            var encoder = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);

            using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream(encoder.GetBytes(serializedObject)))
            {   
                return (T)serializer.ReadObject(memoryStream);
            }
        }