How to generate this XML sample, with custom 2nd line, from within C#?

Question

I need to generate the following XML, but have thus far been unsuccessful in injecting my custom header data:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req xmlns:ns0="http://hsd.sd.com">
   <personnel_id>1202</personnel_id>
   <dob>19470906</dob>
</ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req>

How can i generate the above XML, from within C#?

Currently we have :

    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Employee));
    StringWriter sww = new StringWriter();
    XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sww);
    serializer.Serialize(writer, employee);

Employee Class:

public class Employee
{
    public string personnel_id { get; set; }
    public string dob { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

Making some reasonable guesses about what your Employee class looks like, you need to do the following:

1. Decorate your Employee class with [XmlRoot("MT_Get_Name_Req", Namespace = "http://hsd.sd.com")]. This will give your XML root element the correct name and namespace.

2. While the root is in the http://hsd.sd.com namespace, its child elements are not in any namespace. Thus their namespace will need to be overridden using an XmlElement attribute.

3. Setting the XmlRoot namespace will use the specified namespace as the default namespace. If you must use a prefixed namespace, you need to pass a XmlSerializerNamespaces with all desired namespaces to XmlSerializer.Serialize().

Thus:

[XmlRoot("MT_Get_Name_Req", Namespace = Employee.XmlNamespace)]
public class Employee
{
    public const string XmlNamespace = "http://hsd.sd.com";
    public const string XmlNamespacePrefix = "ns0";

    const string xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance";
    const string xsd = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema";

    public static XmlSerializerNamespaces XmlSerializerNamespaces
    {
        get
        {
            var namespaces = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
            namespaces.Add(XmlNamespacePrefix, XmlNamespace);
            // namespaces.Add("xsi", xsi);  Uncomment to add standard namespaces.
            // namespaces.Add("xsd", xsd);
            return namespaces;
        }
    }

    [XmlElement("personnel_id", Namespace="")]
    public string personnel_id { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("dob", Namespace = "")]
    public string dob { get; set; }
}

And use it like

        var xml = XmlSerializationHelper.GetXml(employee, Employee.XmlSerializerNamespaces, Encoding.UTF8);

Using the extension methods:

public static class XmlSerializationHelper
{
    public sealed class StringWriterWithEncoding : StringWriter
    {
        private readonly Encoding encoding;

        public StringWriterWithEncoding(Encoding encoding)
        {
            this.encoding = encoding;
        }

        public override Encoding Encoding
        {
            get { return encoding; }
        }
    }

    public static string GetXml<T>(T obj, XmlSerializerNamespaces ns, Encoding encoding)
    {
        return GetXml(obj, new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()), ns, encoding);
    }

    public static string GetXml<T>(T obj, XmlSerializer serializer, XmlSerializerNamespaces ns, Encoding encoding)
    {
        using (var textWriter = new StringWriterWithEncoding(encoding))
        {
            XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
            settings.Indent = true;        // For cosmetic purposes.
            settings.IndentChars = "    "; // For cosmetic purposes.
            using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(textWriter, settings))
            {
                if (ns != null)
                    serializer.Serialize(xmlWriter, obj, ns);
                else
                    serializer.Serialize(xmlWriter, obj);
            }
            return textWriter.ToString();
        }
    }
}

To get

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req xmlns:ns0="http://hsd.sd.com">
    <personnel_id>1202</personnel_id>
    <dob>19470906</dob>
</ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req>

Answer 2

I did a small example for you. I included an XmlRoot Attribute to the Employee.class and added a namespace object when serializing the employee.

• see Add prefixes and namespaces to xml Serialization
• and SO Question How to set xml prefixes

Employee.cs

[XmlRoot("MT_Get_Name_Req", Namespace = "http://hsd.sd.com")]
public class Employee
{
    [XmlElement(Namespace="")]
    public string personnel_id { get; set; }
    [XmlElement(Namespace = "")]
    public string dob { get; set; }
}

demoFile.cs

private static void customXmlSerialization()
{
    Employee employee = new Employee() { personnel_id = "1202", dob = "19470906" };
    XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
    ns.Add("ns0", "http://hsd.sd.com");
    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Employee));

    string path = @"e:\temp\data.xml";
    XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(path, Encoding.UTF8);
    serializer.Serialize(writer, employee,ns);
}

output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req xmlns:ns0="http://hsd.sd.com">
  <personnel_id>1202</personnel_id>
  <dob>19470906</dob>
</ns0:MT_Get_Name_Req>