C# : Deserialize xml with an unknow number of attributes

Question

I would like to deserialize xml files with the following pattern :

I would like to put the data into a class call Parameter. However, as you can see, I don't knwo by advance how many <Device> I get between <Parameters> ... </Parameters> and the deserialization is not possible with such a DeserializeObjectXMLFile method.

public static Parameters DeserializeObjectXMLFile(String fileToRead)
        {
            try
            {
                Parameters parameters = null;
                XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Parameters));
                
                using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fileToRead))
                {
                    parameters = xs.Deserialize(sr) as Parameters;
                }
                
                return parameters;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Logger.Error(ex);

                throw ex;

            }
        }

I imagined having a property List<Device> Devices {get; set} in my Parameters class but deserialization won't work and I don't know how I can do it.

Could you help me in finding a solution ?

Best regards.

Rémi

Answer 1

Use the XmlDocument object in the System.Xml namespace to parse the XML instead of serializing it.

Here is an example:

var xDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
xDoc.Load(pathToXml);

foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode node in xDoc.DocumentElement.ChildNodes) 
{
     var attrName = node.Attributes[0].Name;
     var attrValue = node.Attributes[0].Value;
     Device dev = new Device(attrName, attrValue);
     deviceList.Add(dev);
}

While parsing you can then create a new instance of Parameters and add it to a List object.