C# deserialize specific xml elements into custom list

Question

I have an issue where I'm trying to put all the sales periods(SalesYear, SalesToday...) XML elements into a custom C# list where all the sales periods should be items.

This is the returned XML I'm deserializing:

<SalesStatisticsPartner>
    <PartnerId>137</PartnerId>
    <PartnerName>Humac DK</PartnerName>
    <LocalCurrency>DKK</LocalCurrency>
    <SalesYear>1252</SalesYear>
    <SalesYearPremium>1861548.0</SalesYearPremium>
    <SalesLastMonth>1241</SalesLastMonth>
    <SalesLastMonthPremium>1852359.0</SalesLastMonthPremium>
    <SalesMonth>11</SalesMonth>
    <SalesMonthPremium>9189.0</SalesMonthPremium>
    <SalesLastWeek>0</SalesLastWeek>
    <SalesLastWeekPremium>0.0</SalesLastWeekPremium>
    <SalesWeek>0</SalesWeek>
    <SalesWeekPremium>0.0</SalesWeekPremium>
    <SalesYesterday>0</SalesYesterday>
    <SalesYesterdayPremium>0.0</SalesYesterdayPremium>
    <SalesToday>0</SalesToday>
    <SalesTodayPremium>0.0</SalesTodayPremium>
</SalesStatisticsPartner>

This is my current C# class which I'm deserializing into:

[XmlRoot(ElementName = "SalesStatisticsPartner"]
    public class SalesStatisticsPartner
    {   
        public int PartnerId { get; set; }

        public string PartnerName { get; set; }

        public List<SalesPeriod> SalesPeriods { get; set; }

        public string LocalCurrency { get; set; }

        public int SalesYear { get; set; }

        public double SalesYearPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesLastMonth { get; set; }

        public double SalesLastMonthPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesMonth { get; set; }

        public double SalesMonthPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesLastWeek { get; set; }

        public double SalesLastWeekPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesWeek { get; set; }

        public double SalesWeekPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesYesterday { get; set; }

        public double SalesYesterdayPremium { get; set; }

        public int SalesToday { get; set; }

        public double SalesTodayPremium { get; set; }
    }

The reason why I would like to put each sales period into a list is because I need to iterate through all the possible sales periods in my code and unfortunately I don't have access to change the XML structure.

Answer 1

You should be able to load the XML into an XDocument and extract the information. For example, this would return a Dictionary containing the name of the element (SalesYear, etc.) as the key and its value as the value for every element whose name begins with "Sales":

xDoc.Root.Element("SalesStatisticsPartner").Elements().Where(e => e.Name.LocalName.StartsWith("Sales")).ToDictionary(e => e.Name.Localname, e => e.Value);

If you just want a list of the names of the elements beginning with "Sales" you could do:

xDoc.Root.Element("SalesStatisticsPartner").Elements().Where(e => e.Name.LocalName.StartsWith("Sales")).Select(e => e.Name.LocalName).ToList();

You might have to change the code depending on the exact structure of your XML, but the general approach should work.