C# How to serialize/deserialize a string array as a series of named elements

Question

I have referenced this question: Using XmlSerializer with an array in the root element

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Subscribers xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <SubscriberList>
    <Subscriber>
      <Email>test@somewhere.com</Email>
      <SubscriptionList>
        <Subscription>
          <Source>TFSBuildServiceHost.2013</Source>
        </Subscription>
        <Subscription>
          <TextContains>
            <string>ABC</string>
            <string>DEF</string>
            <string>XYZ</string>
          </TextContains>
        </Subscription>
      </SubscriptionList>
    </Subscriber>
  </SubscriberList>
</Subscribers>

This is what I want my XML to look like. How can I change the code below to build it in this fashion.

        <Subscription>
            <TextContains>ABC</TextContains>
            <TextContains>DEF</TextContains>
            <TextContains>XYZ</TextContains>
        </Subscription>

This is my class definition to serialize:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization; 

namespace EventLog_Reporter
{
    public class Subscription
    {
        public string Source;
        public List<string> TextContains;
        public List<string> UCTextContains;
        public List<string> TextExcludes;
        public List<string> UCTextExcludes;
    }

    public class Subscriber
    {
        public string Group;
        public string Email;
        public List<Subscription> SubscriptionList; 
    }

    public class Subscribers 
    {
        public List<Subscriber> SubscriberList;
    }
}

This is my code to write out the serialized object to an XML file:

    public static void testSerialization()
    {
        Subscribers subscribers = new Subscribers();
        Subscription subscription1 = new Subscription();
        Subscription subscription2 = new Subscription();
        Subscriber subscriber1 = new Subscriber();

        subscription2.TextContains = new List<string>(); 
        subscription2.TextContains.Add("ABC"); 
        subscription2.TextContains.Add("DEF"); 
        subscription2.TextContains.Add("XYZ"); 

        subscription1.Source = "TFSBuildServiceHost.2013";

        subscriber1.Email = "test@somewhere.com";
        subscriber1.SubscriptionList = new List<Subscription>(); 
        subscriber1.SubscriptionList.Add(subscription1);
        subscriber1.SubscriptionList.Add(subscription2);

        subscribers.SubscriberList = new List<Subscriber>();
        subscribers.SubscriberList.Add(subscriber1);

        string strOutFilenameXMLSerializer = "xmlSerializerObjectTest1.xml"; 
        StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(strOutFilenameXMLSerializer);
        XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(subscribers.GetType());
        xmlSerializer.Serialize(sw, subscribers);
        sw.Close(); 

    }

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use the [XmlElement] attribute to specify that your List<string> should be serialized without an outer wrapper element:

public class Subscription
{
    public string Source;
    [XmlElement]
    public List<string> TextContains;
    [XmlElement]
    public List<string> UCTextContains;
    [XmlElement]
    public List<string> TextExcludes;
    [XmlElement]
    public List<string> UCTextExcludes;
}

Doing so will cause the list to be serialized as a sequence of elements each having the same name as the list property being serialized, in this case TextContains.

If you had needed to override the element name, it can be specified in the attribute constructor:

    [XmlElement("Contains")]
    public List<string> TextContains;