XmlSerializer crashes when encountering xml attribute (namespace)

Question

Im trying to Deserialize a XML im getting from a service. But the XmlSerializer failes when encountering the first attribute.

My shortened xml looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<ns2:basicInformation xmlns:ns2="http://fu.bar.com/">
   <somenode>...</somenode>
   ...
</ns2:basicInformation>

My class looks like this

[XmlRoot(ElementName = "basicInformation")]
public class BasicInformation
{
  [XmlElement(ElementName = "somenode")]
  public string SomeNode { get; set; }

  ...

  [XmlAttribute(AttributeName = "ns2")]
  public string Ns2 { get; set; }

  [XmlText]
  public string Text { get; set; }
}

The error i get is this:

"There is an error in XML document (1, 57)."}
Data: {System.Collections.ListDictionaryInternal}
HResult: -2146233079
HelpLink: null
InnerException: {"<basicInformation xmlns='http://message.async.dms.svap.deere.com/'> was not expected."}
Message: "There is an error in XML document (1, 57)."
Source: "System.Xml"
StackTrace: "   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(XmlReader xmlReader, String encodingStyle, XmlDeserializationEvents events)\r\n   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(TextReader textReader)\r\n   at AzureQueue.Program.Blurg() in E:\\_Code_\\Testing\\AzureQueue\\AzureQueue\\Program.cs:line 432\r\n   at AzureQueue.Program.<DoSomething>d__1.MoveNext() in E:\\_Code_\\Testing\\AzureQueue\\AzureQueue\\Program.cs:line 71"
TargetSite: {System.Object Deserialize(System.Xml.XmlReader, System.String, System.Xml.Serialization.XmlDeserializationEvents)}

If I replace the second line in the xaml from this:

<ns2:basicInformation xmlns:ns2="http://fu.bar.com/">

to this:

<basicInformation>

everything works just fine.

So it's something with that attribute that im not handeling correctly, but I haven't been able to find a solution.

I should mention that the C# class was generated from a xml to c# tool because the full xml is huge.

So what am I missing? I could solve this the really ugly way and do a string replace but that feels very wrong! ;)

Update

I have accepted @Marc Gravell answer, it works. But i choose to go with the @Denis Micheal solution because it solves my my problem without having to put namespaces on all the XML nodes in my c# models

xmlns: doesn't introduce an attribute, but a namespace declaration. — choroba
– choroba, Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 16:42
Does this answer your question? XML Serialization and namespace prefixes — Charlieface
– Charlieface, Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 20:20
if you wanted to hide the namespace URL, you have included it in the error code. — Nathan White
– Nathan White, Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 23:53

Marc Gravell · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-02 16:48:31Z

2

[XmlRoot(ElementName = "basicInformation", Namespace = "http://fu.bar.com/")]
public class BasicInformation

Your data is namespace-qualified, and that matters. You may need to apply this individually to child elements, too, but: take that as it comes.

answered Nov 2, 2023 at 16:48

Marc Gravell

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4 Comments

merger Over a year ago

I tried this. And now the Deserialization didn't throw an error. BUT, the resulting BasicInformation object returned contained all null values.

Marc Gravell Over a year ago

@merger then the child elements need their namespace correctly specifying - I suspect to "" in this case (explicitly)

Marc Gravell Over a year ago

Namespaces are difficult

merger Over a year ago

You were correct! When i modified my C# classes to include a Empty namespace - [XmlElement(ElementName = "somenode",Namespace ="")]- it deserialized correctly!

Denis Michealk · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-02 18:07:14Z

1

Like @Marc Gravell pointed out your xml data has a namespace that you need to also take into account when deserializing. If you want to ignore the namespace that comes with the data,You could create a custom xml reader to ignore the namespace

 public class IgnoreNamespaceXmlTextReader : XmlTextReader
 {
     public IgnoreNamespaceXmlTextReader(System.IO.TextReader reader) : base(reader) { }

     public override string NamespaceURI
     {
         get { return ""; }
     }
 }

Then when deserializing


 var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(BasicInformation));
 using (var stringReader = new StringReader(xml))
 {
     
     // Deserialize the XML string into a BasicInformation object
      var basicInfo = (BasicInformation)serializer.Deserialize(new IgnoreNamespaceXmlTextReader(stringReader));
 }

edited Nov 2, 2023 at 18:07

answered Nov 2, 2023 at 17:03

Denis Michealk

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3 Comments

merger Over a year ago

This worked really well. Im gonna do some more tests with this! TY

Marc Gravell Over a year ago

It is almost always preferable to simply tell it what namespace to expect than to disable namespaces entirely

Denis Michealk Over a year ago

@Marc Gravell sure , but have had scenarios where deserializing xml was a constant nightmare due to mutable namespaces in the xml data from an external source. The namespaces weren't even pertinent to application logic or data consumed by service.

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