Question

I’m trying to deserialize the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<TestPrice>
  <Price>
    <A>A</A>
    <B>B</B>
    <C>C</C>     
    <Intervals>
      <Interval>
        <A>A</A>
        <B>B</B>
        <C>C</C>
      </Interval>
      <Interval>
        <A>A</A>
        <B>B</B>
        <C>C</C>
      </Interval>
    </Intervals>
  </Price>
</TestPrice>

And I have three classes defined to deserialize this into an object graph:

public class TestPrice
{
    private List<Price> _prices = new List<Price>();
    public List<Price> Price 
    { 
        get { return _prices; }
        set { _prices = value; }
    }
}

public class Price
{
    public string A { get; set; }
    public string B { get; set; }
    public string C { get; set; }

    private List<Interval> _intervals = new List<Interval>();
    public List<Interval> Intervals
    {
        get { return _intervals; }
        set { _intervals = value; }
    }
}

public class Interval
{
    public string A { get; set; }
    public string B { get; set; }
    public string C { get; set; }
}

I can deserialize each part ok. That is, I can do:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Price));
var priceEntity = ((Price)(serializer.Deserialize(XmlReader.Create(stringReader))));

And priceEntity is correctly initialized with the XML data contained in stringReader, including the List<Interval> Intervals. However if I try to deserialize a TestPrice instance, it always comes up with an empty List<Price> Price.

If I change the definition of TestPrice like this:

public class TestPrice
{
    public Price Price { get; set; } 
}

It works. but of course my XSD defines Price as a sequence. I have other entities deserializing just fine, but they don’t include sequences in the root element. Is there a limitation that I’m unaware of? Should I include some sort of metadata in TestPrice?

Answer 1

Just decorate your Price collection with [XmlElement]:

[XmlElement(ElementName = "Price")]
public List<Price> Price
{
    get { return _prices; }
    set { _prices = value; }
}

Also you seem to be deserializing Price, whereas the root tag in your XML is TestPrice. So, here’s a full example:

public class TestPrice
{
    [XmlElement(ElementName = "Price")]
    public List<Price> Price { get; set; }
}

public class Price
{
    public string A { get; set; }
    public string B { get; set; }
    public string C { get; set; }

    public List<Interval> Intervals { get; set; }
}

public class Interval
{
    public string A { get; set; }
    public string B { get; set; }
    public string C { get; set; }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var xml = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8"" ?>
<TestPrice>
  <Price>
    <A>A</A>
    <B>B</B>
    <C>C</C>
    <Intervals>
      <Interval>
        <A>A</A>
        <B>B</B>
        <C>C</C>
      </Interval>
      <Interval>
        <A>A</A>
        <B>B</B>
        <C>C</C>
      </Interval>
    </Intervals>
  </Price>
</TestPrice>";

        var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TestPrice));
        using (var reader = new StringReader(xml))
        using (var xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(reader))
        { 
            var priceEntity = (TestPrice)serializer.Deserialize(xmlReader);
            foreach (var price in priceEntity.Price)
            {
                 // do something with the price
            }
        }
    }
}