Deserialization Error: The XML element 'name' from namespace '' is already present in the current scope

Question

This is my first time using XML Serialization and this is driving me absolutely nuts after 2 days of trying to troubleshoot this.

I get this error w

Answer 1

(08 Feb) First, treating xml as a string (for reading) isn't going to cause errors.

The problem is the namespace (the xmlns without the xsi); this wasn't in the earlier xml, so I couldn't include it... basically, you need to tell the serializer about it:

[Serializable, XmlRoot("photos_GetAlbums_response",
    Namespace="http://api.example.com/1.0/")]
public class GetAlbumsResponse { /* code as before */ }

[Serializable, XmlType(Namespace="http://api.example.com/1.0/")]
public class Album { /* code as before */ }

On this occasion, a constant for the namespace would make sense (since you are re-using it).

If the xml you are showing is accurate, then the links are still corrupt, though... but maybe this is just copy/paste (i.e. don't apply this change until you know it errors...): you need & (not &). Suggest some "Replace"... at the crudest level:

string fixedXml = xml.Replace("&", "&");

(although something more precise might be better - perhaps a regex)

Note that with the different data I also had to make some of the data strings (rather than long):

[XmlElement("aid")]
public string AlbumID { get; set; }

[XmlElement("cover_pid")]
public string CoverPhotoID { get; set; }

[XmlElement("owner")]
public string Owner { get; set; }

With these changes (and mostly my original code) it works.

Of course, by this point you should be thinking "I wish I'd used xsd".