Deserializing XML comment documentation C#

Question

I'm trying to deserialize some C# documentation XML, starting at the members node in the snippet below.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<doc>
    <assembly>
        <name>Licsp</name>
    </assembly>
    <members>
        <member name="T:Licsp.Parsing.SExp">
            <summary>
            Intermediary structure used by parser
            </summary>
        </member>
     </members>
</doc>

Each member should deserialize to a DocItem ; the collection of members should deserialize to DocFile .

[XmlRoot("members")]
public class DocFile
{
    [XmlArrayItem("member", typeof(DocItem))]
    public List<DocItem> Items = new List<DocItem>();
}

[Serializable()]
public class DocItem
{
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string Name;

    [XmlElement("summary")]
    public string Summary;

    [XmlElement("example")]
    public string Example;

    [XmlElement("remarks")]
    public string Remarks;
}

Here's the calling code:

        using (var reader = new XmlTextReader(documentation))
        {
            reader.ReadToDescendant("members");
            var deserializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(DocFile));
            DocFile helpfile = (DocFile)deserializer.Deserialize(reader.ReadSubtree());
        }

I'm getting back a DocFile object, but Items is empty. Serializing a DocFile object produces the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<members xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Items>
    <member name="name">
      <summary>summary</summary>
      <example>example</example>
      <remarks>remarks</remarks>
    </member>
  </Items>
</members>

I'm not sure why the deserialization is failing. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Since members is your root and you need the member children in a collection, replace your [XmlArrayItem] with [XmlElement]

XmlElement can be used for individual nodes and also to roll many nodes with the same name into a collection.

[XmlRoot("members")]
public class DocFile
{
    [XmlElement("member")]
    public List<DocItem> Items = new List<DocItem>();
}

XmlArrayItem is to be used in conjunction with XmlArray . This would have worked if for example, your were one level up with doc as your root.