Question

I have an XML configuration file with a collection of strings like so:

<SomeSetting>value</SomeSetting> <SomeOtherSetting>value</SomeOtherSetting> <TypesOfThings>   <Thing>Type 1</Thing>   <Thing>Type 2</Thing>   <Thing>Type 3</Thing> </TypesOfThings> 

These ‘Things’ become options in the front end of the app for the user to choose from.

My question is do I have to create a thing class in order to use Serialization properly or is there a way of using attributes to read the strings straight into a list?

For example (bodies and private vars removed for brevity, this is .NET 2.0):

[Serializable] public class Config {    public string SomeSetting    {          get;         set;    }      public string SomeOtherSetting    {          get;         set;    }     public List<string> TypesOfThings    {       get;       set;    } } 

Answer 1

You specify the way it should be serialized using the XmlArrayAttribute :

[XmlArray(ElementName = 'TypesOfThings')] [XmlArrayItem(ElementName='Thing')] public List<string> TypesOfThings {    get;    set; } 

Edit: the name of items is actuality specified using the XmlArrayItemAttribute