Conditional XML serialization???

[Vinayak Kamat]

Hi,

I've got two classes - Entity which will have an array of Child objects
in it and Child class.

class Entity
{

public Child[] Children;

}

class Child
{

public string Name;
public string Description;

}

I want to be able to serialize this class into two different XMLs.

1) looks like,
<Entity>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
</Entity>

2) looks like,
<Entity>
<Child Name=""/>
<Child Name=""/>
<Child Name=""/>
</Entity>

How to do this? Coz If I use [XmlIgnore] attribute on class Child's
description attribute, then it won't allow me to produce Xml (1).
So its basically to control serialization during runtime.

My serialization code currently looks like,

// Serialize the Entity object in to an XML document, and we are done.
TextWriter objTextWriter = null;
XmlSerializer objXmlSerializer = new
XmlSerializer(typeof(Entity));
objTextWriter = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Entity.xml");
objXmlSerializer.Serialize(objTextWriter, objEntity);

Any help in this regard would be of great help. MS experts help me out
here... please..

Cheers,
Vin

[Clive Dixon]

How about modifying your code to:

class Child
{
public string Name;
public string Description;
[XmlIgnore]
public bool DescriptionSpecified;
}

The framework serialization process checks for a Boolean field with the same
name as each field but suffixed with "Specified". If such a Boolean field
exists, it will only serialize the original field if the Boolean field's
value is 'true'.
"Vinayak Kamat" <kg*******@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:11*********************@z14g2000cwz.googlegro ups.com...

Hi,

I've got two classes - Entity which will have an array of Child objects
in it and Child class.

class Entity
{

public Child[] Children;

}

class Child
{

public string Name;
public string Description;

}

I want to be able to serialize this class into two different XMLs.

1) looks like,
<Entity>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
<Child Name="" Description=""/>
</Entity>

2) looks like,
<Entity>
<Child Name=""/>
<Child Name=""/>
<Child Name=""/>
</Entity>

How to do this? Coz If I use [XmlIgnore] attribute on class Child's
description attribute, then it won't allow me to produce Xml (1).
So its basically to control serialization during runtime.

My serialization code currently looks like,

// Serialize the Entity object in to an XML document, and we are done.
TextWriter objTextWriter = null;
XmlSerializer objXmlSerializer = new
XmlSerializer(typeof(Entity));
objTextWriter = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Entity.xml");
objXmlSerializer.Serialize(objTextWriter, objEntity);

Any help in this regard would be of great help. MS experts help me out
here... please..

Cheers,
Vin

[Vinayak Kamat]

It works !!!!

Thank you very much Clive.
That's what I was looking for.

Cheers,
Vin