Question

I’m attempting to serialize a Level object that looks something like this:

public class Level
{
    //Some XmlAtributes

    [XmlElement]
    public List<Question> questions;
}

public class Question
{
    //Some XmlAttributes

    [XmlArray("Answers")]
    public List<string> answers;
}

into and XML file that looks like this:

<Level time="2">
    <Question type="multiplechoice">
        <Answers correct="b">
            <a>Answer 1</a>
            <b>Answer 2</b>
            <c>Answer 3</c>
            <d>Answer 4</d>
        </Answers>
    </Question>

    <Question>
        ...
    </Question>
</Level>

I can already serialize this except for the element names under <Answers>. Notice how each element gets an incremented name, rather than all being the same (e.g. <string> by default). Is this possible? I know I can rename the elements with [XmlArrayItem("ItemName")], but this applies the same name to all elements in the array.

Answer 1

If anyone else happens across this, here is the solution I went with (thanks to IAbstract’s tip):

public class Answer : IXmlSerializable
{
    public List<string> list = new List<string>();
    public string this[int pos]
    {
        get
        {
            return list[pos];
        }

        set
        {
            list[pos] = value;
        }
    }

    public void ReadXml ( XmlReader reader )
    {
        reader.ReadToDescendant("a");
        while ( reader.Name != "Answers" )
        {
            if ( reader.IsStartElement() )
            {
                list.Add(reader.ReadElementContentAsString());
            }
        }

        reader.Read();
    }

    public void WriteXml ( XmlWriter writer )
    {
        for ( int i = 0; i < list.Count; i++ )
        {
            writer.WriteElementString(((char)(97 + i)).ToString(), list[i]);
        }
    }

    public XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return(null);
    }
}

I made Answer it’s own class as it has attributes and I don’t need to override the serialization behavior for anything else within the Question class. The extra reader.Read() is to make sure the reader is moved to the next tag after , or else deserialization won’t continue after dealing with Answer.

It’s not 100% perfect, but for my implementation it’s enough.