Serialize Property as Xml Attribute in Element

Question

I have the following class:

[Serializable] public class SomeModel {     [XmlElement("SomeStringElementName")]     public string SomeString { get; set; }      [XmlElement("SomeInfoElementName")]     public int SomeInfo { get; set; } } 

Which (when populated with some test data) and Serialized using XmlSerializer.Serialize() results in the following XML:

<SomeModel>   <SomeStringElementName>testData</SomeStringElementName>   <SomeInfoElementName>5</SomeInfoElementName> </SomeModel> 

What I need to have is:

<SomeModel>   <SomeStringElementName Value="testData" />   <SomeInfoElementName Value="5" /> </SomeModel> 

Is there a way to specify this as attributes without writing my own custom serialization code?

Answer 1

You will need wrapper classes:

public class SomeIntInfo {     [XmlAttribute]     public int Value { get; set; } }  public class SomeStringInfo {     [XmlAttribute]     public string Value { get; set; } }  public class SomeModel {     [XmlElement("SomeStringElementName")]     public SomeStringInfo SomeString { get; set; }      [XmlElement("SomeInfoElementName")]     public SomeIntInfo SomeInfo { get; set; } } 

or a more generic approach if you prefer:

public class SomeInfo<T> {     [XmlAttribute]     public T Value { get; set; } }  public class SomeModel {     [XmlElement("SomeStringElementName")]     public SomeInfo<string> SomeString { get; set; }      [XmlElement("SomeInfoElementName")]     public SomeInfo<int> SomeInfo { get; set; } } 

And then:

class Program {     static void Main()     {         var model = new SomeModel         {             SomeString = new SomeInfo<string> { Value = "testData" },             SomeInfo = new SomeInfo<int> { Value = 5 }         };         var serializer = new XmlSerializer(model.GetType());         serializer.Serialize(Console.Out, model);     } } 

will produce:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ibm850"?> <SomeModel xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">   <SomeStringElementName Value="testData" />   <SomeInfoElementName Value="5" /> </SomeModel> 

Answer 2

Kind of, use the XmlAttribute instead of XmlElement, but it won't look like what you want. It will look like the following:

<SomeModel SomeStringElementName="testData">  </SomeModel>  

The only way I can think of to achieve what you want (natively) would be to have properties pointing to objects named SomeStringElementName and SomeInfoElementName where the class contained a single getter named "value". You could take this one step further and use DataContractSerializer so that the wrapper classes can be private. XmlSerializer won't read private properties.

// TODO: make the class generic so that an int or string can be used. [Serializable]   public class SerializationClass {     public SerializationClass(string value)     {         this.Value = value;     }      [XmlAttribute("value")]     public string Value { get; } }   [Serializable]                      public class SomeModel                      {                          [XmlIgnore]                          public string SomeString { get; set; }                           [XmlIgnore]                           public int SomeInfo { get; set; }        [XmlElement]     public SerializationClass SomeStringElementName     {         get { return new SerializationClass(this.SomeString); }     }                }