Question

I have a web service that has an input object similar to the following.

public class MyInput {     [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArrayItem('Demographic')]     public DemographicsInfo[] Demographics {get; set;} } 

With the definition of the DemographicsInfo class like this.

public class DemographicsInfo {     [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute()]     public string Name { get; set; }     public string Value { get; set; } } 

Right now this generates an XML structure like this.

<Demographics>     <Demographic Name='String'>         <value>string</value>     </Demographic>     <Demographic Name='String'>         <value>string</value>     </Demographic> </Demographics> 

I need to get it into this

<Demographics>     <Demographic Name='String'>string</Demographic>     <Demographic Name='String'>string</Demographic> </Demographics> 

For the life of me, I cannot seem to find the proper attribute(s) to apply to get this format. Does anyone have any advice?

Answer 1

If you know the structure you want, the simplest option is to work back from the xml; write the xml into a file (foo.xml in my case), then (at the command line):

xsd foo.xml xsd foo.xsd /classes 

Then look at foo.cs to see how it can be done; it turns out that you simply mark the value with [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTextAttribute()].

Here’s the xsd output:

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> //     This code was generated by a tool. //     Runtime Version:2.0.50727.3053 // //     Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if //     the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------  using System.Xml.Serialization;  //  // This source code was auto-generated by xsd, Version=2.0.50727.3038. //    /// <remarks/> [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute('xsd', '2.0.50727.3038')] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute('code')] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType=true)] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(Namespace='', IsNullable=false)] public partial class Demographics {      private DemographicsDemographic[] itemsField;      /// <remarks/>     [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute('Demographic', Form=System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, IsNullable=true)]     public DemographicsDemographic[] Items {         get {             return this.itemsField;         }         set {             this.itemsField = value;         }     } }  /// <remarks/> [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute('xsd', '2.0.50727.3038')] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute('code')] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType=true)] public partial class DemographicsDemographic {      private string nameField;      private string valueField;      /// <remarks/>     [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute()]     public string Name {         get {             return this.nameField;         }         set {             this.nameField = value;         }     }      /// <remarks/>     [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTextAttribute()]     public string Value {         get {             return this.valueField;         }         set {             this.valueField = value;         }     } }