Object to XML using LINQ or XmlSerializer

In Following post I am going show you how easily you can convert you object in the XML string, because sometime there is need of pass object and XML from one function to another and also convert XML string back to object. But As title suggest here I just going to discuss the conversion of object to XML string.

Following two way to achieve this task of converting Object to XML.

Before we start Below is class structure which object need to be convert in XML string.

public class Product
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public int Code { get; set; }
        public List<productType> types {get; set;}
    }

    public class productType
    {
        public string type {get; set;}
    }

As you can see in structure Product is class and it's having list of producttype in it.

Way 1 : Linq To XML

 List<productType> typ = new List<productType>();
            typ.Add((new productType() { type="Type1"}));
            typ.Add((new productType() { type = "Type2" }));
            typ.Add((new productType() { type = "Type3" }));

            Product[] products = { new Product { Name = "apple", Code = 9,types=typ }, 
                       new Product { Name = "orange", Code = 4,types=typ   }, 
                       new Product { Name = "apple", Code = 9 ,types=typ}, 
                       new Product { Name = "lemon", Code = 9,types=typ } };

Above code is creating array of product which contains the object of product. Over all its initializing the product array object.Now to convert this in the XML using Linq following is code

            XElement _customers = new XElement("Products",
                       from c in products
                       orderby c.Code 
                        select new XElement("product",
                            new XElement("Code", c.Code),
                            new XElement("Name", c.Name),
                            new XElement("Types", (from x in c.types
                                                  orderby x.type//descending 
                            select new XElement("Type",x.type)) 
                        ))
                  );

            Console.WriteLine(_customers.ToString());

As you see in above code its converting the each property of object in XMLElement by using method of Linq To XML which is XElement. You can modify structure as per you needs here is more on Linq to XML

Output



Way 2 : Make use of XmlSerializer
You can easily convert the object in XML string by using Serializer as shown below. This process called as object serialization.

            XmlSerializer xser = new XmlSerializer(products.GetType());
            xser.Serialize(Console.Out, products);
            Console.ReadLine();

As you see there just two line of code need to conversion. There is no need to write more amount of the code like Linq To XML, But if you want to control structure of the generated XML you need to decorate your class with XmlAttributes. Read more about this XmlSerializer

Output



Comparison between both the ways

• Big difference between both is way XML string is generated. That you can easily figure out form the Output of both the way.
• XmlSerializer provide more control on XML than than the Lin To XML.
• As stated with Linq to Xml you need to write down more amount of code to structure the XML string which is very easy with XmlSerializer. But if you dont want the default structure generated by XmlSerializer you need to use XmlAttributes for each property. with attribute class will be

 public class Product
    {
        [XmlElement("Product Name")]
        public string Name { get; set; }
        [XmlElement("Code")]
        public int Code { get; set; }
        [XmlElement("Types")]
        public List types {get; set;}
    }

But you can easily do this in Linq to XML.

•  When you dont want to include some property in XML string. you just need to skip that property like this.

XElement _customers = new XElement("Products",
                       from c in products
                       orderby c.Code //descending 
                        select new XElement("product",
                            //new XElement("Code", c.Code),
                            new XElement("Name", c.Name),
                            new XElement("Types", (from x in c.types
                                                  orderby x.type//descending 
                            select new XElement("Type",x.type)) 
                        ))
                  );

in linq to xml you just need to remove it here i just commented Code so there is no element for Code.

For XmlSerializer you need to put attribute called [Obsolete] on top of property.

        public string Name { get; set; }
        [Obsolete]
        public int Code { get; set; }
        public List types {get; set;}

• Another Difference is Linq TO XML is faster than XmlSerializer which you can easy see by running the code its because XmlSerializer is Serializing object which might be using reflection and other metadata information about the object.

Conclusion
You can use one of the way as per your need. But if you just want to generate XML than its better to go for Linq to XML and if there is serialization/ de-serialization required than go for XmlSerializer .

Provide comments if you find more difference and there is thing change require in above. Thanks for reading.

Read Xml with Descendants Method (XName)

This post is about understanding Descendants and avoid misconception with this method.
Recently I read one question on StackOverFlow  about reading xml using Linq To Xml to get node values. In that developer made use of Descendants Method to get the child node values.

Let see the actual problem here following is XML to read. And developer wrote code to read out value of orderid node.

<ordersreport date="2012-08-01">
<returns>
      <amount>
        <orderid>2</orderid>
        <orderid>3</orderid>
        <orderid>21</orderid>
        <orderid>23</orderid>
      </amount>
    </returns>
</ordersreport>

So code written like this

    var amount = documentRoot.Descendants("Amount")
               .Select(y => new
               {
                  OrderId = (int)y.Element("OrderId")
               });
               foreach (var r in amount)
               {
                  Console.WriteLine(r.OrderId);
               }

Ouput of above code is
 2
that is only first orderid element value which is child of Amount , So misconception here by developer of the code is Descendants("Amount") returns child element of the Amount tag i.e. all orderId element.

Now to Understand Descendants function in better way I visited to MSDN link which says something like this
XContainer.Descendants Method (XName) - Returns a filtered collection of the descendant elements for this document or element, in document order. Only elements that have a matching XName are included in the collection. So as per the defincation on MSDN problem with code

    var amount = doc.Descendants("Amount")                         
      .Select(y => new
      {
       OrderId = (int)y.Element("OrderId")
       });

will give you Element Amount and when you write y.Element("OrderId") will return you fist element of its child.
Descendants - doesn't mean than its return the child element of element name rather than method look for descendants of element or if name of elemnt specified as parameter than matching descendants.
Finally I got following solution to get it properly work

XElement documentRoot  = 
     XElement.Parse (@"<ordersreport date="2012-08-01">
                             <returns>
                              <amount>
                                  <orderid>2</orderid>                                                    
                                  <orderid>3</orderid>
                                  <orderid>21</orderid>
                                  <orderid>23</orderid>
                               </amount>
                             </returns>
                        </ordersreport>");

Solution 1

var orderids = from order in
                  documentRoot.Descendants("Amount").Descendants()
                  select new
                  {
                     OrderId = order.Value
                  };

As per the information on MSDN documentRoot.Descendants("Amount").Descendants() give list of orderId elements.

Solution 2

var orderids = from order in
                    documentRoot.Descendants("OrderId")
                    select new
                    {
                       OrderId = order.Value
                    };

or the second solution is just bit easy than this just make use of documentRoot.Descendants("OrderId") that will give all orderidelement.

Conclusion
This post is just for avoiding misconception related to Descendants and understand it properly.

Leave your comments if you like it.

CodeProject