Deserialize alternative names for the same class

Question

I have a serialier that is not totally unlike the following:

[Serializable]
public class MSG
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Name { get; set; } = string.Empty;

    [XmlText]
    public string Content { get; set; } = string.Empty;
}

public MSG DeserializeMyMsg(string xmlstr)
{
    TextReader reader = new StringReader(xmlstr);
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MSG));
    MSG ret = serializer.Deserialize(reader) as MSG;
    return ret;
}

This would successfully deserialize the following:

<MSG Name="woho">any content</MSG>

Occasionally data can arrive as:

<Mg Name="woho">any content</Mg>

How can I mark Mg as an alternative name for MSG?

---

MSG is the root. Fixing Mg would be the long term goal but is not an option either. The messages could be retrofitted with an outer root.

Answer 1

You mentioned in a comment you could wrap your xml. This feels an awful lot like a hack but this works. Generally my advice would be don't do this!

So your xml would be:

<NewRoot><MSG Name="woho">any content</MSG></NewRoot>

Or

<NewRoot><Mg Name="woho">any content</Mg></NewRoot>

Then define these classes and deserialize the above xml:

public class NewRoot
{
    [XmlElement("MSG", typeof(MSG))]
    [XmlElement("Mg", typeof(Mg))]
    public MSG Msg {get;set;}
}

public class Mg : MSG {}