Deserializing XML to Objects in C#

Question

So I have xml that looks like this:

<todo-list>   <id type="integer">#{id}</id>   <name>#{name}</name>   <description>#{description}</description>   <project-id type="integer">#{project_id}</project-id>   <milestone-id type="integer">#{milestone_id}</milestone-id>   <position type="integer">#{position}</position>    <!-- if user can see private lists -->   <private type="boolean">#{private}</private>    <!-- if the account supports time tracking -->   <tracked type="boolean">#{tracked}</tracked>    <!-- if todo-items are included in the response -->   <todo-items type="array">     <todo-item>       ...     </todo-item>     <todo-item>       ...     </todo-item>     ...   </todo-items> </todo-list> 

How would I go about using .NET's serialization library to deserialize this into C# objects?

Currently I'm using reflection and I map between the xml and my objects using the naming conventions.

Answer 1

Create a class for each element that has a property for each element and a List or Array of objects (use the created one) for each child element. Then call System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize on the string and cast the result as your object. Use the System.Xml.Serialization attributes to make adjustments, like to map the element to your ToDoList class, use the XmlElement("todo-list") attribute.

A shourtcut is to load your XML into Visual Studio, click the "Infer Schema" button and run "xsd.exe /c schema.xsd" to generate the classes. xsd.exe is in the tools folder. Then go through the generated code and make adjustments, such as changing shorts to ints where appropriate.