Question

I have a class with two parameters. One is the update time in Minutes and the other is the same value in seconds like this:

using System.Xml.Serialization;

[XmlRoot(ElementName="config")]
public class Config
{
    [XmlElement(ElementName = "update_mins")]
    public int Minutes 
    {
        get
        {
            return this.Seconds / 60;
        }
        set
        {
            this.Seconds = value * 60;
        }
    }

    [XmlElement(ElementName = "update_secs")]
    public int Seconds { get; set; }
}

I get xml strings that can have either update_mins or update_secs but not both. I need to be able to use this class to deserialize these strings, this works ok. I also need to be able to searalize these classes and send them on, however when I do the serailzation it includes both update_secs and update_mins. Like this:

<config>
  <update_mins>23</update_mins>
  <update_secs>1380</update_secs>
</config>

When I want to get this:

<config>
  <update_secs>1380</update_secs>
</config>

I tried putting XmlIgnore on the update_mins value, but that stopped it deserializing the element. Is it possible to do this, and if so how?

My full code example is:

namespace Scrap
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string s = "<config><update_mins>23</update_mins></config>";

            XmlSerializer searializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Config));
            Config result = (Config)searializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(s));

            Console.WriteLine("Minutes: " + result.Minutes);
            Console.WriteLine("Seconds: " + result.Seconds);

            Debug.Assert(result.Minutes == 23);
            Debug.Assert(result.Seconds == 1380);

            StringWriter s2w = new StringWriter();
            searializer.Serialize(s2w, result);

            Console.WriteLine(s2w.ToString());

            string xmlResult = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-16\"?>\r\n" +
                "<config xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">\r\n" +                
                "  <update_secs>1380</update_secs>\r\n" +
                "</config>";

            Debug.Assert(s2w.ToString() == xmlResult);

            Console.ReadKey(true);
        }
    }

    [XmlRoot(ElementName = "config")]
    public class Config
    {
        [XmlElement(ElementName = "update_mins")]        
        public int Minutes
        {            
            get
            {
                return this.Seconds / 60;
            }    
            set
            {
                this.Seconds = value * 60;
            }
        }

        [XmlElement(ElementName = "update_secs")]
        public int Seconds { get; set; }
    }
}

Answer 1

This is still not an ideal solution, but the way I have resolved this is to add [XmlIgnore] to the Minutes property (as Aliostad and others had suggested) and then add an AllElements property like this:

    [XmlAnyElement]
    public XmlElement[] AllElements
    {
        get
        {
            XmlElement[] value = new XmlElement[0];
            return value;
        }

        set
        {
            if (value != null)
            {
                foreach (XmlElement e in value)
                {
                    switch (e.Name)
                    {
                        case "update_mins":
                            this.Minutes = Convert.ToInt32(e.InnerText);
                            break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }