Serialize XML with XML string

Question

I have to produce the following XML

<object>
    <stuff>
        <body>
            <random>This could be any rondom piece of unknown xml</random>
        </body>
    </stuff>
</object>

I have mapped this to a class, with a body property of type string.

If I set the body to the string value: "<random>This could be any rondom piece of unknown xml</random>"

The string gets encoded during serialization. How can I not encode the string so that it gets written as raw XML?

I will also want to be able to deserialize this.

What language? What platform?

Oded
– Oded

2012-01-12 10:11:23 +00:00
Commented Jan 12, 2012 at 10:11 — Oded
– Oded, Commented Jan 12, 2012 at 10:11
Opps, justed added the .NET and C# tags

John
– John

2012-01-12 10:16:08 +00:00
Commented Jan 12, 2012 at 10:16 — John
– John, Commented Jan 12, 2012 at 10:16

Marc Gravell · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-12 10:36:22Z

6

XmlSerializer will simply not trust you to produce valid xml from a string. If you want a member to be ad-hoc xml, it must be something like XmlElement. For example:

[XmlElement("body")]
public XmlElement Body {get;set;}

with Body an XmlElement named random with InnerText of "This could be any rondom piece of unknown xml" would work.

[XmlRoot("object")]
public class Outer
{
    [XmlElement("stuff")]
    public Inner Inner { get; set; }
}
public class Inner
{
    [XmlElement("body")]
    public XmlElement Body { get; set; }
}

static class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.LoadXml(
           "<random>This could be any rondom piece of unknown xml</random>");
        var obj = new Outer {Inner = new Inner { Body = doc.DocumentElement }};

        new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()).Serialize(Console.Out, obj);
    }
}

edited Jan 12, 2012 at 10:36

answered Jan 12, 2012 at 10:31

Marc Gravell

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2 Comments

John Over a year ago

Thanks, you seem quite clued up on xml serilization, and chance you can answer: stackoverflow.com/questions/8853082/custom-xml-serialization

Joel Peltonen Over a year ago

Cool solution, even Deserialization works - but what if the random XML is like <a>---</a><a>---</a><b>----</b>? Then it can't be loaded into an XmlDocument. That's what I would need to do - with deserialization.

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