Serializing Class Derived from Generic Collection yet Deserializing the Generic Collection
- by Stacey
I have a Repository Class with the following method...
public T Single<T>(Predicate<T> expression)
{
using (var list = (Models.Collectable<T>)System.Xml.Serializer.Deserialize(typeof(Models.Collectable<T>), FileName))
{
return list.Find(expression);
}
}
Where Collectable is defined..
[Serializable]
public class Collectable<T> : List<T>, IDisposable
{
public Collectable() { }
public void Dispose() { }
}
And an Item that uses it is defined..
[Serializable]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRoot("Titles")]
public partial class Titles : Collectable<Title>
{
}
The problem is when I call the method, it expects "Collectable" to be the XmlRoot, but the XmlRoot is "Titles" (all of object Title).
I have several classes that are collected in .xml files like this, but it seems pointless to rewrite the basic methods for loading each up when the generic accessors do it - but how can I enforce the proper root name for each file without hard coding methods for each one? The [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRoot] seems to be ignored.
When called like this...
var titles = Repository.List<Models.Title>();
I get the exception
<Titlesxmlns=''> was not expected.
The XML is formatted such as. ..
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<Titles xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Title>
<Id>442daf7d-193c-4da8-be0b-417cec9dc1c5</Id>
</Title>
</Titles>
Here is the deserialization code.
public static T Deserialize<T>(String xmlString)
{
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer XmlFormatSerializer
= new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
StreamReader XmlStringReader = new StreamReader(xmlString);
//XmlTextReader XmlFormatReader = new XmlTextReader(XmlStringReader);
try
{
return (T)XmlFormatSerializer.Deserialize(XmlStringReader);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
throw e;
}
finally
{
XmlStringReader.Close();
}
}
