Question

I need to serialize to an array which has multiple non-nested values i.e.

 <MyArray>
    <Code>code1</Code>
    <Name>name associated with code 1</Name>
    <Code>code2</Code>
    <Name>name associated with code 2</Name>
    <Code>code3</Code>
    <Name>name associated with code 3</Name>
    <Code>code4</Code>
    <Name>name associated with code 4</Name>
  </MyArray>

I’ve tried various attributes on my array – e.g.

[XmlArray(ElementName="MyArray")]        
[XmlArrayItem(ElementName="")]        
public List<MyPair> MyPairs { get; set; }

NB: the MyPair object contains 2 string properties (Code & Name):

but to no avail, I always get a containing element for each pair (which would normally be better but not what the schema demands – and over which I’ve no control). Any help greatly appreciated.

EDIT This is part of a huge xml document, is it possible to use manual serialization of XElement for 1 part of it and XMLSerialization for the rest?

Answer 1

Just to close this off. I worked around the problem with I think what could be called a bit of a hack as I wanted avoid serializing the entire object graph manually. So:

• Used xml serialization to serialize to a string
• Manipulated the string to remove offending extra nested elements
• Parsed xml entire string to single XElement (required to allow this to be serialized correctly as xml for WCF)