How to customize XML serialization output for Object?

Question

I have customizable object class I'd like to serialize:

public partial class CustomObject
{               
    public List<CustomProperty> Properties;
}

public class CustomProperty
{              
    public object Value;                
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Name;
}

// some class to be used as a value for CustomProperty
public class Person
{
  public string Name;
  public string Surname;
  public string Photo;
  [XmlAttribute]
  public int Age;
}

Currently XML serialization output looks like this:

<CustomObject>
  <Properties>
    <CustomProperty Name="Employer">
      <Value p6:type="Person" xmlns:p6="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" Age="30">
        <Name>John</Name>
        <Surname>Doe</Surname>
        <Photo>photos/John.jpg</Photo>
      </Value>
    </CustomProperty>
    <CustomProperty Name="Desc">
      <Value xmlns:q1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" p7:type="q1:string" xmlns:p7="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">some text</Value>
    </CustomProperty>
  </Properties>
</CustomObject>

First and foremost I'd like to remove namespaces and all that noise.

The end result should look like this:

<CustomObject>
  <Properties>
    <CustomProperty Name="Employer">
      <Person Age="30">
        <Name>John</Name>
        <Surname>Doe</Surname>
        <Photo>photos/John.jpg</Photo>
      </Person>
    </CustomProperty>
    <CustomProperty Name="Desc">
      <string>some text</string>
    </CustomProperty>
  </Properties>
</CustomObject>

Or this:

<CustomObject>
  <Properties>
    <Person Name="Employer" Age="30">
      <Name>John</Name>
      <Surname>Doe</Surname>
      <Photo>photos/John.jpg</Photo>
    </Person>
    <string Name="Desc">
      some text
    </string>
  </Properties>
</CustomObject>

How can make XmlSerializer to output it like that?

Johann Blais · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-15 05:39:39Z

1

You can also specify the element name to make sure that the types are correctly processed:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("files", typeof(Files))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("metrics", typeof(Metrics))]
public object[] Items { get; set; }

answered Sep 15, 2010 at 5:39

Johann Blais

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1 Comment

JBeurer Over a year ago

This gets the first desired case. Thanks!

VinayC · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-15 05:18:39Z

1

Look at XmlElement attribute - this may solve your problem at least partially. From MSDN:

public class Things {
    [XmlElement(DataType = typeof(string)),
    XmlElement(DataType = typeof(int))]
    public object[] StringsAndInts;
 }

will produce

 <Things>
    <string>Hello</string>
    <int>999</int>
    <string>World</string>
 </Things>

answered Sep 15, 2010 at 5:18

VinayC

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1 Comment

JBeurer Over a year ago

It looks like MSDN actually has an error in the example,I think it should be [XmlElement(Type = typeof(string))] [XmlElement(Type = typeof(int))], because DataType is string. But this works too! Thanks!

Mou · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-09 07:06:51Z

1

you can remove namespace like

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sb);
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(WSOpenShipments), myns);
            var ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
            ns.Add(string.Empty, "");
            serializer.Serialize(writer, OS, ns);
            xmlString = sb.ToString();

usse this -- ns.Add(string.Empty, "");

answered May 9, 2011 at 7:06

Mou

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