Serializing a list of Key/Value pairs to XML
- by Slauma
I have a list of key/value pairs I'd like to store in and retrieve from a XML file. So this task is similar as described here. I am trying to follow the advice in the marked answer (using a KeyValuePair and a XmlSerializer) but I don't get it working.
What I have so far is a "Settings" class ...
public class Settings
{
public int simpleValue;
public List<KeyValuePair<string, int>> list;
}
... an instance of this class ...
Settings aSettings = new Settings();
aSettings.simpleValue = 2;
aSettings.list = new List<KeyValuePair<string, int>>();
aSettings.list.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, int>("m1", 1));
aSettings.list.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, int>("m2", 2));
... and the following code to write that instance to a XML file:
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Settings));
TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter("c:\\testfile.xml");
serializer.Serialize(writer, aSettings);
writer.Close();
The resulting file is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Settings xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<simpleValue>2</simpleValue>
<list>
<KeyValuePairOfStringInt32 />
<KeyValuePairOfStringInt32 />
</list>
</Settings>
So neither key nor value of the pairs in my list are stored though the number of elements is correct. Obviously I am doing something basically wrong. My questions are:
How can I store the key/value pairs of the list in the file?
How can I change the default generated name "KeyValuePairOfStringInt32" of the elements in the list to some other name like "listElement" I'd like to have?
