Question

I’m in need to serialize an string that is valid xml to an object. The thing is that object is 2 arrays of other objects, and i don’t know if the following annotation is correct:

[XmlRoot("Data")]
public class Data
{
    [XmlArray("ServicoUrgente")]
    public ServicoUrgente[] servicosUrgentes;

    [XmlArray("Mensagem")]
    public Mensagem[] mensagens;
}


[XmlRoot("Mensagem")]
public class Mensagem
{
    [XmlElement("ToUserID")]
    public int ToUserID;

    [XmlElement("Message")]
    public int Message;

    [XmlElement("TimeStamp")]
    public DateTime TimeStamp;

}


[XmlRoot("ServicoUrgente")]
public class ServicoUrgente
{
    [XmlElement("ServicoID")]
    public int ServicoID;
    [XmlElement("ToUserID")]
    public int ToUserID;

    [XmlElement("FromUserID")]
    public int FromUserID;
    [XmlElement("FromUserName")]
    public string FromUserName;

    [XmlElement("DataInicioPrevista")]
    public DateTime DataInicioPrevista;
    [XmlElement("DataFimPrevista")]
    public DateTime DataFimPrevista;

    [XmlElement("IDPoi")]
    public int IDPoi;
    [XmlElement("NomePoi")]
    public string Nome;
    [XmlElement("DescricaoPoi")]
    public string Descricao;
    [XmlElement("NContratoPoi")]
    public string NContrato;
    [XmlElement("MoradaPoi")]
    public string Morada;
    [XmlElement("LatitudePoi")]
    public double Latitude;
    [XmlElement("LongitudePoi")]
    public double Longitude;

}

The questions is: DO we have for each class an xmlRoot attribute, or only the Data class has it, and the other two have another attribute instead of the xmlroot

Answer 1

XmlRoot is only going to do anything if the object ends up as the root element of a serialized file. It does not affect how objects are named inside arrays (as far as i know).

To set the names of arrays and the objects inside use the respective attributes:

[XmlArray("NameOfElementWrappingTheItems")]
[XmlArrayItem("NameOfItemsInsideTheArray")]
public object[] Stuff ...

We cannot know if your code is correct if you don’t post the XML it should translate to or read from.