Deserialize xml into class having string values in xml

Question

Let me explain, there is a database table which has 1 XML column named audits and other common types of column.

so is this possible to deserialize below XML into class.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<entity type="Order">
    <id type="System.Int64">146</id>
    <ordernumber type="System.String">OD555</ordernumber>
    <audits type='System.String'>
      <audit>
        <item>
          <create timestamp='2017-07-19 10:02:13' userid='23' />
        </item>
        <invoice>
          <create timestamp='2017-07-19 10:03:37' userid='45' />
        </invoice>
      </audit>
    </audits>
</entity>

Class:

public class Order 
{
    public long id { get; set; }
    public string ordernumber { get; set; }
    public string audits { get; set; }
}   

Answer 1

Modifying your model with the attributes XmlType and XmlAnyElement (requires XmlElement as type)

[XmlType("entity")]
public class Order
{
    public long id { get; set; }
    public string ordernumber { get; set; }
    [XmlAnyElement]
    public XmlElement audits { get; set; }
}

allows to deserialize the complete XML string like

using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(stream))
{
    writer.Write(xmlString);
    writer.Flush();
    stream.Position = 0;

    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Order));
    Order o = (Order)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
}

Now you are able to get the audits as string like

string auditsString = o.audits.InnerXml;

You can also add a property to your model to simplify the access:

public string auditsString
{
    get
    {
        return audits.InnerXml;
    }
}