Question

I have a weird problem with serializing a list of a nested class in C#. The class is defined as

public class Settings : XmlSerializable
{
    private string mPath = "";
    public string Path
    {
        get { return mPath; }
        set { mPath = value; }
    }

    [XmlArrayItem("ChatEventsAndReactions")]
    public List<MessageEvent> Events;
}

public abstract class XmlSerializable
{
    public virtual void Save(string path)
    {
        StreamWriter w = new StreamWriter(path);
        XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());
        s.Serialize(w, this);
        w.Close();
    }

    public virtual void Load(string path)
    {
        if (File.Exists(path))
        {
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path);
            XmlTextReader xr = new XmlTextReader(sr);
            XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());
            object c;
            if (xs.CanDeserialize(xr))
            {
                c = xs.Deserialize(xr);
                Type t = this.GetType();
                PropertyInfo[] properties = t.GetProperties();
                foreach (PropertyInfo p in properties)
                {
                    p.SetValue(this, p.GetValue(c, null), null);
                }
            }
            xr.Close();
            sr.Close();

        }
    }
}

and the class MessageEvent is defined as

public class MessageEvent
{
    public MessageData Message = new MessageData();
    public MessageReaction Reaction = new MessageReaction();

    public override string ToString()
    {
        string tmp = this.Message.ToString() + " " + this.Reaction.ToString();
        return tmp;
    }
}

public class MessageReaction
{
    public string ReactionType;
    public string Parameter;

    public override string ToString()
    {
        string tmp = "Reaction: " + this.ReactionType + " " +
                     "Parameter: " + this.Parameter;
        return tmp;
    }
}

public class MessageData
{
    public string ChannelName;
    public string ChannelID;
    public string SenderName;
    public string MessageID;
    public string Text;

    public MessageData()
    { }

    public MessageData(string content)
    {
        this.ConvertFromString(content);
    }

    public void Clear()
    {
        this.ChannelName = "";
        this.ChannelID = "";
        this.MessageID = "";
        this.SenderName = "";
        this.Text = "";

    }

    public void ConvertFromString(string msg)
    {
        int HeaderEnd = msg.IndexOf("]") + 1;
        string Header = msg.Substring(0, HeaderEnd);
        string Text = msg.Substring(HeaderEnd);
        Header = Header.Replace("[", "");
        Header = Header.Replace("]", "");
        Header = Header.Replace("\",\"", "\"");
        Header = Header.Replace("\",", "\"");
        char[] Seperator = { '\"' };
        string[] message = Header.Split(Seperator);
        this.ChannelName = message[2];
        this.ChannelID = message[1];
        this.MessageID = message[4];
        this.SenderName = message[3];
        this.Text = Text;
    }

    public void ConvertFromObject(object o)
    {
        MessageData tmp = (MessageData)o;
        this.ChannelName = tmp.ChannelName;
        this.ChannelID = tmp.ChannelID;
        this.SenderName = tmp.SenderName;
        this.MessageID = tmp.MessageID;
        this.Text = tmp.Text;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return "ChannelID: " + this.ChannelID + " " +
               "CannelName: " + this.ChannelName + " " +
               "SenderName: " + this.SenderName + " " +
               "MessageID : " + this.MessageID + " " +
               "Message: " + this.Text;
    }
}

The weird problem with that is that it works perfectly when saving the data (resulting in a clear XML with all the data) but when I read from the XML file, I get a list with the correct number of items, but they are all empty ("" in every string). Path works fine

Thanks for working through this wall of text ;o)

Answer 1

public List<MessageEvent> Events; is a field, not a property. You need to repeat the same process for fields as you’ve done for properties.