Question

I got an XML input string and want to deserialize it to an object which partially retain the raw XML.

<SetProfile>
  <sessionId>A81D83BC-09A0-4E32-B440-0000033D7AAD</sessionId>
  <profileDataXml>
    <ArrayOfProfileItem>
      <ProfileItem>
        <Name>Pulse</Name>
        <Value>80</Value>
      </ProfileItem>
      <ProfileItem>
        <Name>BloodPresure</Name>
        <Value>120</Value>
      </ProfileItem>
    </ArrayOfProfileItem>
  </profileDataXml>
</SetProfile>

The class definition:

public class SetProfile
{
    public Guid sessionId;
    public string profileDataXml;
}

I hope the deserialization syntax looks like

string inputXML = "..."; // the above XML
XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(SetProfile));
using (TextReader reader = new StringReader(inputXML))
{
    SetProfile obj = (SetProfile)xs.Deserialize(reader);
    // use obj ....
}

but XMLSerializer will throw an exception and won’t output < profileDataXml >’s descendants to “profileDataXml” field in raw XML string.

Is there any way to implement the deserialization like that?

Answer 1

If you want to deserialize that as XML, then use an XML type (either XElement or XmlElement should work) – see code below.

public class StackOverflow_11234676
{
    const string XML = @"<SetProfile>
                          <sessionId>A81D83BC-09A0-4E32-B440-0000033D7AAD</sessionId>
                          <profileDataXml>
                            <ArrayOfProfileItem>
                              <ProfileItem>
                                <Name>Pulse</Name>
                                <Value>80</Value>
                              </ProfileItem>
                              <ProfileItem>
                                <Name>BloodPresure</Name>
                                <Value>120</Value>
                              </ProfileItem>
                            </ArrayOfProfileItem>
                          </profileDataXml>
                        </SetProfile>";

    public class SetProfile
    {
        public Guid sessionId;
        public XElement profileDataXml;
    }
    public static void Test()
    {
        string inputXML = XML;
        XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(SetProfile));
        using (TextReader reader = new StringReader(inputXML))
        {
            SetProfile obj = (SetProfile)xs.Deserialize(reader);
            Console.WriteLine(obj.profileDataXml);
        }
    }
}