Handling multiple fields with one XML tag in C# XmlSerializer

Question

I have a XML snippet that looks like this:

<object>
  <field name="p1">Foo</field>
  <field name="p2">Bar</field>
  <field_list name="p3">
    <field_value>Me</field_value>
    <field_value>Myself</field_value>
    <field_value>I</field_value>
  </field_list>
</object>

What I would like to do is represent this in C# as a Dictionary - the keys are the names (p1, p2, p3) and the values are a List of strings - the first two (p1, p2) would have a single element and the third (p3) would have three elements.

This Xml document needs to be de-serialized. How can I do this and end up with the object desired?

Answer 1

The XmlSerializer class does not serialize Dictionary natively. However, there are third party serializers available such as sharp serializer and one from Peter Welter .

If you want to implement it yourself without additional libraries, implement IXmlSerializable and provide custom implementations of ReadXml and WriteXml.

See also:

• Why doesn't XmlSerializer support Dictionary?
• Deserializing with XmlSerializer List into Dictionary
• Why isn't there an XML-serializable dictionary in .NET?