Question

I’m using the svcutil tool to generate a set of proxies for a 3rd party wdsl. One of the types, defined in an associated XSD file uses the xs:any element:

<xs:any namespace="##any" processContents="lax"/>

The code produced uses a property of type XmlElement to represent this:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAnyElementAttribute(Order=0)]
public System.Xml.XmlElement Any
{
    get
    {
        return this.anyField;
    }
    set
    {
        this.anyField = value;
    }
}

What actually needs to go in this field is one of the strongly-typed objects also generated by the tool.

My question is: is there an easy/recommended way to get from an instance of the object to an instance of XmlElement?

All I can think of is serializing the object graph into a XmlDocument and then using that. But that seems awkward.

Answer 1

The generated code is correct for the schema. xs:any mas to a xml blob. You will need to change the schema from xs:any to the specific type if you want the generated code to be more specific.

However, if the schema is not under your control, this is the only correct way to consume the schema. You cannot assume that a message contains any specific type.