What is the easiest way to convert this XML document to my object?

c#, converters, xml, xmldocument

Solution

You could start by fixing your XML because in the example you have shown you have unclosed tags. You might also wrap the `<Building>` tags into a `<Buildings>` collection in order to be able to have other properties in this Location class other than buildings.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<info>
  <locations>
    <location name="New York">
      <Buildings>
        <Building name="Building1">
          <Rooms>
            <Room name="Room1">
              <Capacity>18</Capacity>
            </Room>
            <Room name="Room2">
              <Capacity>6</Capacity>
            </Room>
          </Rooms>
        </Building>

        <Building name="Building2">
          <Rooms>
            <Room name="RoomA">
              <Capacity>18</Capacity>
            </Room>
          </Rooms>
        </Building>
      </Buildings>
    </location>
    <location name="London">
      <Buildings>
        <Building name="Building45">
          <Rooms>
            <Room name="Room5">
              <Capacity>6</Capacity>
            </Room>
          </Rooms>
        </Building>
      </Buildings>
    </location>
  </locations>
</info>

Once you have fixed your XML you could adapt your models. I would recommend you using properties instead of fields in your classes:

public class Location
{
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public List<Building> Buildings { get; set; }
}

public class Building
{
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public List<Room> Rooms { get; set; }
}

public class Room
{
    [XmlAttribute("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Capacity { get; set; }
}

[XmlRoot("info")]
public class Info
{
    [XmlArray("locations")]
    [XmlArrayItem("location")]
    public List<Location> Locations { get; set; }
}

and now all that's left is deserialize the XML:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Info));
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create("locations.xml"))
{
    Info info = (Info)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
    List<Location> locations = info.Locations;
    // do whatever you wanted to do with those locations
}

Problem

I have an XMLDocument that i need to read in and convert into a set of objects. I have the following objects ``` public class Location { public string Name; public List<Building> Buildings; } public class Building { public string Name; public List<Room> Rooms; } ``` and i have the following XML file: ``` <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <info> <locations> <location name="New York"> <Building name="Building1"> <Rooms> <Room name="Room1"> <Capacity>18</Capacity> </Room> <Room name="Room2"> <Capacity>6</Capacity> </Room> </Rooms> </Building> <Building name="Building2"> <Rooms> <Room name="RoomA"> <Capacity>18</Capacity> </Room> </Rooms> </Building> </location> <location name ="London"> <Building name="Building45"> <Rooms> <Room name="Room5"> <Capacity>6</Capacity> </Room> </Building> </location> </locations> </info> ``` What is the best way of doing this? Should I be serializing the xmldocument to the object automatically or do i need to parse out each element and convert into my object manually? In particular, I am trying to figure out how to convert the collections (locations, buildings, etc). What is the best suggestion to convert this XML file into basically a ``` List<Location> ``` objects?

Original source