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Unexpected Behavior when Using XmlSerializer with Custom XML Elements in C#

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 4 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-06-06
xml c# serialization csharp

I'm performance testing and I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me....... After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm facing an issue while trying to deserialize XML data into a custom object using `XmlSerializer` in C#. The XML structure includes custom elements that are not matching the property names in my class, and it's resulting in missing data during deserialization. Hereโ€™s a snippet of my XML: ```xml <Orders> <Order> <OrderID>12345</OrderID> <CustomerName>John Doe</CustomerName> <ItemDetails> <Item> <ItemName>Widget</ItemName> <Quantity>2</Quantity> </Item> </ItemDetails> </Order> </Orders> ``` And hereโ€™s the class Iโ€™m using to deserialize: ```csharp [XmlRoot("Orders")] public class Orders { [XmlElement("Order")] public List<Order> OrderList { get; set; } } public class Order { [XmlElement("OrderID")] public string Id { get; set; } [XmlElement("CustomerName")] public string Customer { get; set; } [XmlArray("ItemDetails")] [XmlArrayItem("Item")] public List<Item> Items { get; set; } } public class Item { [XmlElement("ItemName")] public string Name { get; set; } [XmlElement("Quantity")] public int Quantity { get; set; } } ``` After deserializing, the `OrderList` in my `Orders` object is always null. Iโ€™ve tried various configurations, including adding `[XmlArray]` attributes to the `OrderList`, but nothing seems to work. I also get the following warning: ``` The XML element 'Orders' is missing the required property 'OrderList'. ``` Iโ€™m using .NET 5.0 for this project. Is there a specific way to handle collections in `XmlSerializer` that I'm missing, or is there a potential issue with the XML structure itself? Any suggestions on fixes or best practices for this scenario would be greatly appreciated! Any ideas what could be causing this? For context: I'm using Csharp on Linux. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. Am I approaching this the right way? I'm developing on Ubuntu 20.04 with Csharp. Any advice would be much appreciated.