C# Xml deserialization with custom type member

Question

I have an object to deserialize but the object has custom type ApplicationLanguage that cannot be serialize.

 [Serializable]
    public class FieldTranslation
    {
        // how is this possible?
        // does the 'en-us' in this member is reachable in this concept?
        //public ApplicationLanguage Lang = ApplicationLanguagesList.Get("en-us");

        //public ApplicationLanguage Lang { get; set; }

        [XmlAttribute("name")]
        public string Name{ get; set; }

        public string Tooltip { get; set; }

        public string Label { get; set; }

        public string Error { get; set; }

        public string Language { get; set; }
    }

I built an API to get type ApplicationLanguage from the cache like that:

ApplicationLanguage  en= ApplicationLanguagesList.Get("en-us");

Is there anyway that I can combine the custom type in the serialization above?

this is the xml:

 <Fields lang="en-us">
   <Item name="FirstName">
     <Tooltip>Please provide your {0}</Tooltip>
     <Error>{0} Is not valid</Error>
     <Label>First Name</Label>
  </Item>
</Fields>

Answer 1

you could change your class struct like

[Serializable]
[XmlRoot("Fields")]
public class FieldCollection
{
    [XmlAttribute("lang")]
    public string Lanuage { get; set; }
    [XmlElement("Item")]
    public FieldTranslation[] Fields { get; set; }
}

[Serializable]
public class FieldTranslation
{
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string Tooltip { get; set; }

    public string Label { get; set; }

    public string Error { get; set; }

    public string Language { get; set; }
}

and then set the language property to serialize

Answer 2

Clarification: this answer is based on the pre-edit xml, where there was an

<Language>he</Language>

element. This answer does not apply to the <Fields lang="en-us"> scenario.

Something like:

[XmlIgnore]
public ApplicationLanguage Lang { get; set; }

[XmlElement("Language")]
[Browsable(false), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
public string LangSerialized {
    get { return Lang == null ? null : Lang.Name; } // or where-ever "he" comes from
    set { Lang = value == null ? null : ApplicationLanguagesList.GetByName(value); }
}

Here the LangSerialized member is used as a proxy to the short-form of Lang. With XmlSerializer it is required that this member is public, but I've added a few other attributes to make it disappear from most other common usages.

Answer 3

You can manually fill a field in the collection above like this:

    [XmlAttribute("lang")]
    public string ManuallyFilledLang{ get; set; }

Answer 4

You also could implement a IXmlSerializable interface in your ApplicationLanguage class