Nested attributes and XML deserialization

Question

I am actually stuck in my current project.

I've got a XML of the following structure:

<ExampleCol>
  <ElementWithAttribute attr="null">ElementWithAttribute</ElementWithAttribute>
  <AnotherCol> 
    <Row attr="row1">Name = 1 </Row>
    <Row attr="row2"> Name = 2 </Row>
  </AnotherCol>
<ExampleCol>

I am not able to change that XML structure.

Currently I am working with those classes:

[XmlRoot]
public class ExampleCol
{
    [XmlElement("ElementWithAttribute")]
    public ElementWithAttribute ewa1 {get;set}

    [XmlElement("AnotherCol")]
    public AnotherCol ac1 {get;set}
}

public class ElementWithAttribute 
{
  [XmlElement("ElementWithAttribute")
  public string Value {get;set;}

  [XmlAttribute("attr")
  public string attr {get;set;}
}

public class AnotherCol
{
  [XmlArray]
  [XmlArrayItem("Row")
  public Row[] RowCollection {get;set;}
}

public Row
{
  [XmlElement("Row")]
  public string Name {get;set;}

  [XmlAttribute("attr")]
  public string Attribute [get;set;]
}

Obviously it cannot deserialize AnotherCol and ElementWithAttribute .

(Obviously, because each class of Row and ElementWithAttribute expects a new element as a child.

But I'm just too dumb to see what changes I need to do to achieve my goals.

Anyone could provide me some hints?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here is the code you'll require to be able to deserialize that set of XML:

[XmlRoot(ElementName="ExampleCol")]
public class Test
{
    [XmlElement("ElementWithAttribute")]
    public ElementWithAttribute Element = new ElementWithAttribute();

    [XmlArray(ElementName="AnotherCol")]
    public List<Row> AnotherCol = new List<Row>();
    public Test()
    {

    }
}

public class ElementWithAttribute
{
    public ElementWithAttribute()
    {

    }
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string attr { get; set; }
    [XmlText]
    public string value { get; set; }
}

public class Row
{
    public Row()
    {

    }
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string attr { get; set; }
    [XmlText]
    public string value { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

You need to use [XmlText] :

[XmlRoot]
public class ExampleCol
{

    [XmlText] // Here !!
    public ElementWithAttribute ewa1 {get;set}

    [XmlElement("AnotherCol")]
    public AnotherCol ac1 {get;set}


}

This will help to read the text content of the element as a property.