Question

Is there any way to get the xml serializer to convert the following:

class Mail
{
    public string Subject = "sub1";
}

into the following XML schema:

<Mail>
    <MailSubject>
        <Subject>sub1</Subject>
    </MailSubject>
</Mail>

That is I want to wrap the xmlElement in a new xmlElement group without using the following sub class:

class Mail
{
    public MailSubject MailSubject = new MailSubject();
}

class MailSubject
{
    public string Subject = "sub1";
}

My xml format comes from a 3rd party and I’m trying to make it so that our objects make sense and are easily usable while still keeping to their xml schema.

Answer 1

As Buh Buh said, the only way to do this by implementing IXmlSerializable. A possible implementation would look like this:

public class Mail : IXmlSerializable
{
    public string Subject;

    public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return null;
    }

    public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader)
    {
        bool isEmpty = reader.IsEmptyElement;

        reader.ReadStartElement();  
        if (isEmpty) return;

        isEmpty = reader.IsEmptyElement;
        reader.ReadStartElement();
        if (isEmpty)
        {
            reader.ReadEndElement();
            return;
        }

        Subject = reader.ReadString();

        reader.ReadEndElement();
        reader.ReadEndElement();
    }

    public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer)
    {
        writer.WriteStartElement("MailSubject");
        writer.WriteElementString("Subject", Subject);
        writer.WriteEndElement();
    }
}