Question

I have the following xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<connection_state>conn_state</connection_state>

Following the msdn, I must describe it as a type for correct deserialization using XmlSerializer. So the class name points the first tag, and its fields subtags.
For example:

public class connection_state
{
   public string state;
}

Will be transformed into the following xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<connection_state>
    <state>conn_state</state>
</connection_state>

But the xml I receive has only one tag. And we cannot create a field with the name of its class like:

public class connection_state
{
    public string connection_state;
}

Or can?
Is there any solution for this issue?

Answer 1

Proper Xml has a root element with no content except other elements. If you are stuck with that tiny one-tag psuedo-XML, is there a reason you need to use XmlSerializer? Why not just create a class with a constructor that takes the literal “Xml” string:

using System.Xml.Linq;

public class connection_state {
    public string state { get; set; }
    public connection_state(string xml) {
        this.state = XDocument.Parse(xml).Element("connection_state").Value;
    }
}

Edit:

In response to OP’s comment: You don’t have to us an XmlSerializer; you can just read the ResponseStream directly and pass that to your connection_state constructor:

String xmlString = (new StreamReader(webResponse.GetResponseStream())).ReadToEnd();
connection_state c= new connection_state(xmlString);