序列化字符串列表作为属性

Question

I am working with XML serialization, I am doing good so far. However, I stumbled with a problem and I wish if you guys can help me with it.

I have a class as following:

public class FrameSection
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [XmlAttribute]
    public string[] StartSection { get; set; }
}

When serialized, I got something like that:

<FrameSection Name="VAR1" StartSection="First circle Second circle"/>

The problem is with deserialization, I got four items rather than two as space is used as delimiter, I wonder if I can use different delimiter.

Note: I know I can remove [XmlAttribute] to solve the problem, but I prefer this structure because it is more compact.

The serialization code as following:

using (var fileStream = new System.IO.FileStream(FilePath, System.IO.FileMode.Create))
{
    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(ModelElements));
    System.Xml.XmlWriterSettings settings = new System.Xml.XmlWriterSettings();
    settings.Indent = true;
    settings.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;
    settings.CheckCharacters = false;
    System.Xml.XmlWriter writer = System.Xml.XmlWriter.Create(fileStream, settings);
    serializer.Serialize(writer, allElements);
}

Answer 1

You can ignore array during serialization (just use it as backing store), and add a property which will be serialized and deserialized:

public class FrameSection
{
   [XmlAttribute]
   public string Name { get; set; }

   [XmlIgnore]
   public string[] StartSection { get; set; }

   [XmlAttribute("StartSection")]
   public string StartSectionText
   {
      get { return String.Join(",", StartSection); }
      set { StartSection = value.Split(','); }
   }
}

I used here comma as a array items separator, but you can use any other character.

Answer 2

I'm unaware of a way to change the serialization behavior of an array, but if you make the following change to your FrameSection class you should get the desired behavior.

public class FrameSection
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string[] StartSection { get; set; }

    [XmlAttribute]
    public string SerializableStartSection
    {
        get
        {
            return string.Join(",", StartSection);
        }

        set
        {
            StartSection = value.Split(',');
        }
    }
}