XmlSerializer not creating attribute values

  • Thread starter Thread starter John A Grandy
  • Start date Start date
J

John A Grandy

I wrote a simple function to serialize types. I create a simple struct,
marking its public properties with [XmlAttribute]. When I serialize this
struct, none of the properties are present as attributes in the xml stream.


public static string XmlSerialize( object target )
{
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer( target.GetType() );
StringBuilder xml = new StringBuilder();
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter( xml );
serializer.Serialize( writer, target );
writer.Close();
return xml.ToString();
}


public struct MyStruct
{

private int? _id;
private string _name;

[XmlAttribute]
public int? Id
{
get { return _id; }
}

[XmlAttribute]
public string Name
{
get { return _name; }
}

public MyStruct( int id, string name )
{
_id = id;
_name = name;
}

}


MyStruct my = new MyStruct( 7, "test" );
string xml = XmlSerialize( my );


OUTPUT :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<MyStruct xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" />
 
public struct MyStruct
Click to expand...

1. In order to make the attributes serializable, they must also be
deserializable. Thus you will need to add setters for both properties.

2. I am not sure whether serialization of generic types, such as
Nullable<int> (= int?), is supported by the XmlSerializer. If you still
face problems after adding the setters, try to change the type of the Id
parameter to a plain int.
 
John said:
I wrote a simple function to serialize types. I create a simple struct,
marking its public properties with [XmlAttribute]. When I serialize this
struct, none of the properties are present as attributes in the xml stream.
public struct MyStruct
{

private int? _id;
private string _name;

[XmlAttribute]
public int? Id
{
get { return _id; }
}

[XmlAttribute]
public string Name
{
get { return _name; }
}

public MyStruct( int id, string name )
{
_id = id;
_name = name;
}

}
Click to expand...

You will need set implemente din both properties.

And you will need to either use int instead of int? or
use an element instead of an attribute (attributes can not
be nullable).

Arne
 
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