using XmlArrayItem attribute without XmlArray on Serializable C# class

Question

I want XML in the following format:

<configuration><!-- Only one configuration node -->   <logging>...</logging><!-- Only one logging node -->   <credentials>...</credentials><!-- One or more credentials nodes -->   <credentials>...</credentials> </configuration> 

I'm trying to create a class Configuration that has the [Serializable] attribute. To serialize the credentials nodes, I have the following:

[XmlArray("configuration")] [XmlArrayItem("credentials", typeof(CredentialsSection))] public List<CredentialsSection> Credentials { get; set; } 

However, when I serialize this to XML, the XML is in the following format:

<configuration>   <logging>...</logging>   <configuration><!-- Don't want credentials nodes nested in a second                       configuration node -->     <credentials>...</credentials>     <credentials>...</credentials>   </configuration> </configuration> 

If I remove the [XmlArray("configuration")] line, I get the following:

<configuration>   <logging>...</logging>   <Credentials><!-- Don't want credentials nodes nested in Credentials node -->     <credentials>...</credentials>     <credentials>...</credentials>   </Credentials> </configuration> 

How can I serialize this the way I want, with multiple <credentials> nodes within the single root node <configuration>? I wanted to do this without having to implement IXmlSerializable and do custom serialization. This is how my class is described:

[Serializable] [XmlRoot("configuration")] public class Configuration : IEquatable<Configuration> 

Answer 1

The following should serialize properly the way you want. The clue being [XmlElement("credentials")] on the list. I did this by taking your xml, generating a schema (xsd) from it in Visual Studio. Then running xsd.exe on the schema to generate a class. (And some small edits)

public class CredentialsSection {     public string Username { get; set; }     public string Password { get; set; } }  [XmlRoot(Namespace = "", IsNullable = false)] public class configuration {     /// <remarks/>     public string logging { get; set; }      /// <remarks/>     [XmlElement("credentials")]     public List<CredentialsSection> credentials { get; set; }      public string Serialize()     {         var credentialsSection = new CredentialsSection {Username = "a", Password = "b"};         this.credentials = new List<CredentialsSection> {credentialsSection, credentialsSection};         this.logging = "log this";         XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();         TextWriter w = new StringWriter(sb);         s.Serialize(w, this);         w.Flush();         return sb.ToString();     } } 

give the following output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <configuration xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">   <logging>log this</logging>   <credentials>     <Username>a</Username>     <Password>b</Password>   </credentials>   <credentials>     <Username>a</Username>     <Password>b</Password>   </credentials> </configuration>