使用XmlSerializer创建和使用自定义XML特殊字符

Question

I have a ColorFormat class that stores basic information about a color format. The aim is to be able to serialize and deserialize to and from XML. To represent Red, Green and Blue I use special color string identifiers:

public const string RedColorIdentifier = "&red;";
public const string GreenColorIdentifier = "&green;";
public const string BlueColorIdentifier = "&blue;";

For a format like "#RGB", the class format string is as such:

colorFormat.Format = "#" + ColorFormat.RedColorIdentifier +
                           ColorFormat.GreenColorIdentifier +
                           ColorFormat.BlueColorIdentifier;

Ideally, the serialized XML should be:

<ColorFormat Name="HexFmt" ColorBase="Hex">#&red;&green;&blue;</ColorFormat>

The actual serialization is:

<ColorFormat Name="HexFmt" ColorBase="Hex">#&amp;red;&amp;green;&amp;blue;</ColorFormat>

I was wondering if there is a way of "serializing and deserializing" your own custom special XML character

Answer 1

You can use CData to wrap special characters.
From MSDN CDATA Section

For example class below will be serialized witt color values wrapped with CData

[XmlType("ColorFormat")]
public class ColorFormat
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Name { get; set; }

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

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

    [XmlText]
    public XmlNode[] SerializableFormat
    {
        get
        {
            var doc = new XmlDocument();
            return new XmlNode[] { doc.CreateCDataSection(this.Format) };
        }
        set
        {
            this.Format = value[0].Value;
        }
    }
}

Using of ColorFormat class

const string FORMAT = "&red;&green;&blue;";

var format = new ColorFormat
{
    Name = "HexFormat",
    ColorBase = "Hex",
    Format = FORMAT
};

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ColorFormat));
using (var writer = new StringWriter())
{
    serializer.Serialize(writer, format);
    Console.WriteLine(writer.ToString());
}

Answer 2

Finally found it, gotta implement IXmlSerializable as such:

public class ColorFormat : IXmlSerializable
{
    ...

    public XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return null;
    }

    public void ReadXml(XmlReader reader)
    {
        Name = reader.GetAttribute(nameof(Name));
        ColorBase = CommonUtil.ParseStringToEnum<NumberBase>(reader.GetAttribute(nameof(ColorBase)));
        Format = reader.ReadInnerXml();
    }

    public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
    {
        writer.WriteAttributeString(nameof(Name), Name);
        writer.WriteAttributeString(nameof(ColorBase), ColorBase.ToString());
        writer.WriteRaw(Format);
    }
}