Question

I have the following code which outputs an object to an XML file:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace TrailBlazerReloaded
{
    public class Config
    {
        Config config = null;
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Config));

        public Config()
        {
            CollectionPaths = null;
            Definitions = null;
            TrailerPath = null;
        }

        public string Version { get; set; }

        public string[] CollectionPaths { get; set; }

        public string[] Definitions { get; set; }

        public string[] TrailerPath { get; set; }

        public void WriteConfig(Config configToSave)
        {
            serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Config));
            TextWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(@"config.xml");
            serializer.Serialize(textWriter, configToSave);
            textWriter.Close();
        }

        public Config ReadConfig()
        {
            if (File.Exists(@"Config.xml"))
            {
                var reader = new StreamReader("Config.xml");
                config = (Config) serializer.Deserialize(reader);
                reader.Close();
            }

            return config;
        }

        public static string GetConfigFilePath()
        {
            return Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location + ".config";
        }

    }
}

It returns the following result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Version>0.0.1</Version>
  <CollectionPaths>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 1</string>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 2</string>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 3 (100 Films)</string>
  </CollectionPaths>
  <Definitions>
    <string>1080p</string>
    <string>720p</string>
    <string>480p</string>
  </Definitions>
  <TrailerPath>
    <string>C:\</string>
  </TrailerPath>
</Config>

However, I would like the output to include an attribute on each of the Definition tag items like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Version>0.0.1</Version>
  <CollectionPaths>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 1</string>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 2</string>
    <string>F:\Trailblazer Test Folder 3 (100 Films)</string>
  </CollectionPaths>
  <Definitions>
    <string active="true">1080p</string>
    <string active="false">720p</string>
    <string active="true">480p</string>
  </Definitions>
  <TrailerPath>
    <string>C:\</string>
  </TrailerPath>
</Config>

Any ideas? 🙂

Answer 1

You will have to use a custom type instead of a string.

public class Definition
{
    [XmlAttribute("active")]
    public bool Active;
    
    [XmlText]
    public string Text;
}

then define the Definitions property like so

[XmlElement("string")]
public Definition[] Definitions { get; set; }