C# xml serialization remove jagged array element name

Question

I have the below classes:

public class MainRequest
{
    private Request _dataField;

    [XmlElementAttribute(\"Parameters\")]
    public Request Parameters         


        

Answer 1

It appears that what you’re trying to accomplish isn’t supported natively; there’s no way of applying an XmlElement attribute to a jagged array. See XmlSerializer bug when serializing collection of collections without root element?

However, what you can do is decompose your Field[][] jagged array into a simple array of a new type – let’s name it Batch – which would in turn contain an array of your Field type. The following code generates the XML you’re after:

public class MainRequest
{
    [XmlElementAttribute("Parameters")]
    public Request Parameters { get; set; }
}

public class Request
{
    [XmlElementAttribute(IsNullable = true)]
    public RequestSize RequestSize { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("BatchEntry")]
    public Batch[] Batches { get; set; }
}

public class RequestSize
{
    [XmlAttributeAttribute]
    public string Count { get; set; }

    [XmlTextAttribute]
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

public class Batch
{
    [XmlElementAttribute("ParameterEntry")]
    public Field[] Fields { get; set; }
}

public class Field
{
    [XmlAttributeAttribute(AttributeName = "name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [XmlTextAttribute]
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var request = new MainRequest
    {
        Parameters = new Request
        {
            RequestSize = new RequestSize
            {
                Count = "1",
                Value = "2",
            },
            Batches = new Batch[]
            {
                new Batch 
                { 
                    Fields = new Field[] 
                    { 
                        new Field { Name = "AAA", Value = "111"},
                        new Field { Name = "BBB", Value = "222"},
                        new Field { Name = "CCC", Value = "333"},
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    };

    using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
    using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
    {
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MainRequest));
        serializer.Serialize(stream, request);

        stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        var str = reader.ReadToEnd();
    }
}

Generated XML:

  
    2
    
      111
      222
      333
    
  

The advantage of this approach is that it would still work if you define multiple batches. For example:

    var request = new MainRequest
    {
        Parameters = new Request
        {
            RequestSize = new RequestSize
            {
                Count = "2",
                Value = "5",
            },
            Batches = new Batch[]
            {
                new Batch 
                { 
                    Fields = new Field[] 
                    { 
                        new Field { Name = "AAA", Value = "111"},
                        new Field { Name = "BBB", Value = "222"},
                        new Field { Name = "CCC", Value = "333"},
                    }
                },
                new Batch 
                { 
                    Fields = new Field[] 
                    { 
                        new Field { Name = "DDD", Value = "444"},
                        new Field { Name = "EEE", Value = "555"},
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    };

…would generate:

  
    5
    
      111
      222
      333
    
    
      444
      555