Problem in C# Xml deserialization

Question

In my project, legacy code generates xml which has following structure :

<Output>
    <Template recordID=12>
        <Employer type="String">
            <Value>Google</Value>
            <Value>GigaSoft inc.</Value>
        </Employer>
        <Designation  type="String">
            <Value>Google</Value>
        </Designation>
        <Duration  type="String" />
    </Template>
</Output>

I want to deserialize this xml into object which has following properties (I am using C#):

public class EmployerInfo
{
    string[] _employerName;
    string[] _designation;
    string _duration;
}

I tried to deserialize above xml using following attributes around members (NOTE : I have simplified code. I know we should not make data members public. This code is just for experimental purpose)

[XmlElement("Template")]
public class EmployerInfo
{
    [XmlElement("Employer")]
    public string[] _employerName;

    [XmlElement("Designation")]
    public string[] _designation;

    [XmlElement("Duration")]
    public string _duration;
}

To deserialize, in main class I wrote :

XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Output));
TextReader reader = new StreamReader(@"C:\sample_xml.xml");
EmployerInfo fooBar = (EmployerInfo)serial.Deserialize(reader);
reader.Close();

After executing above code, all the members in fooBar object are set to null (default values). I think this is because xml structure does not match with class structure.

I tried to automatically generate class using xsd command but it created seperate classes for each of the data member .

I tried to give element names like XmlElement("Employer.Value") , XmlElement("Template.Employer.Value") but this also didnt work.

Can anyone please suggest some way to fit this xml into a EmployerInfo class ?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Try:

using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
[XmlType("Template")]
public class EmployerInfo
{
    [XmlArray("Employer"), XmlArrayItem("Value")]
    public string[] _employerName;

    [XmlArray("Designation"), XmlArrayItem("Value")]
    public string[] _designation;

    [XmlElement("Duration")]
    public string _duration;
}
public class Output
{
    public EmployerInfo Template { get; set; }
}
static class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Output));
        using (var reader = new StringReader(@"<Output>
    <Template recordID=""12"">
        <Employer type=""String"">
            <Value>Google</Value>
            <Value>GigaSoft inc.</Value>
        </Employer>
        <Designation  type=""String"">
            <Value>Google</Value>
        </Designation>
        <Duration  type=""String"" />
    </Template>
</Output>"))
        {
            EmployerInfo fooBar = ((Output)serial.Deserialize(reader)).Template;
        }
    }
}

Note also tat the type returned from XmlSerializer(typeof(Output))'s deserialize method is going to be a Output record.