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10

Is it possible via an attribute of some sort to serialize a string as CDATA using the .Net XmlSerializer?

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One thing worth noting about the two answers is that you don't need CDataContent if you're only reading XML. XmlSerializer.Deserialize will automatically turn it into text for you. – Chris S Nov 26 '11 at 12:31

3 Answers

up vote 29 down vote accepted 
[XmlRoot("root")]
public class Sample1Xml
{
    internal Sample1Xml()
    {
    }

    [XmlElement("node")]
    public NodeType Node { get; set; }

    #region Nested type: NodeType

    public class NodeType
    {
        [XmlAttribute("attr1")]
        public string Attr1 { get; set; }

        [XmlAttribute("attr2")]
        public string Attr2 { get; set; }

        [XmlIgnore]
        public string Content { get; set; }

        [XmlText]
        public XmlNode[] CDataContent
        {
            get
            {
                var dummy = new XmlDocument();
                return new XmlNode[] {dummy.CreateCDataSection(Content)};
            }
            set
            {
                if (value == null)
                {
                    Content = null;
                    return;
                }

                if (value.Length != 1)
                {
                    throw new InvalidOperationException(
                        String.Format(
                            "Invalid array length {0}", value.Length));
                }

                Content = value[0].Value;
            }
        }
    }

    #endregion
}
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1  
Very useful. Didn't know this was possible! – Jagd Sep 4 '09 at 15:34
3  
To me this doesn't seem like the most elegant solution. Is this the only possible way of doing this? – jamesaharvey Sep 4 '09 at 15:36
1  
I think this is the only way to accomplish this, I've seen this topic elsewhere and always the same answer. The example from Philip is a little cleaner but the same concept. The only other way I know of is to implement your own <a href="msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/…; on a class that represents the CDATA content. – csharptest.net Sep 4 '09 at 16:57
I wanted to do the same thing because it seems like storing strings as CDATA appears to imply less processing time, as with it we could 'only' read/write string 'as is'. How expensive is involving XmlDocument/XmlCDataSection instances? – tishma Apr 9 '12 at 15:04
2  
Philip's solution slightly farther down the page is a tidier thing to do. – Karl May 17 '12 at 15:27
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up vote 44 down vote

In addition to the way posted by John Saunders, you can use an XmlCDataSection as the type directly, although it boils down to nearly the same thing:

   private string _message;
   [XmlElement("CDataElement")]
   public XmlCDataSection Message
   {  
      get 
      { 
         XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
         return doc.CreateCDataSection( _message);
      }
      set
      {
         _message = value.Value;
      }
   }
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@Philip, does this work for deserialization? I've been seeing notes saying that the setter will receive an XmlText value. – John Saunders Sep 4 '09 at 19:55
@John Saunders - It actually receives a XmlCharacterData value in the setter during deserialization, which is what the call to .Value is for in the setter ( I originally had it as ToString() from memory, but that was incorrect. ) – Philip Rieck Sep 8 '09 at 14:41
Works perfectly! – BigJoe714 Mar 28 '12 at 14:39
up vote 5 down vote 
[Serializable]
public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass() { }

    [XmlIgnore]
    public string MyString { get; set; }
    [XmlElement("MyString")]
    public System.Xml.XmlCDataSection MyStringCDATA
    {
        get
        {
            return new System.Xml.XmlDocument().CreateCDataSection(MyString);
        }
        set
        {
            MyString = value.Value;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

MyClass mc = new MyClass();
mc.MyString = "<test>Hello World</test>";
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass));
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
serializer.Serialize(writer, mc);
Console.WriteLine(writer.ToString());

Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<MyClass xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <MyString><![CDATA[<test>Hello World</test>]]></MyString>
</MyClass>
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1  
This should be the accepted answer – jeroenk Jun 18 at 12:16

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