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POCorrect XML serialization and deserialization of "mixed" types in .NET
 

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  1. POCorrect XML serialization and deserialization of "mixed" types in .NET
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    <p>My current task involves writing a class library for processing HL7 CDA files.<br> These HL7 CDA files are XML files with a defined XML schema, so I used xsd.exe to generate .NET classes for XML serialization and deserialization.</p> <p>The XML Schema contains various types which contain the <strong>mixed="true" attribute</strong>, specifying that an XML node of this type may contain normal text mixed with other XML nodes.<br> The relevant part of the <strong>XML schema</strong> for one of these types looks like this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;xs:complexType name="StrucDoc.Paragraph" mixed="true"&gt; &lt;xs:sequence&gt; &lt;xs:element name="caption" type="StrucDoc.Caption" minOccurs="0"/&gt; &lt;xs:choice minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"&gt; &lt;xs:element name="br" type="StrucDoc.Br"/&gt; &lt;xs:element name="sub" type="StrucDoc.Sub"/&gt; &lt;xs:element name="sup" type="StrucDoc.Sup"/&gt; &lt;!-- ...other possible nodes... --&gt; &lt;/xs:choice&gt; &lt;/xs:sequence&gt; &lt;xs:attribute name="ID" type="xs:ID"/&gt; &lt;!-- ...other attributes... --&gt; &lt;/xs:complexType&gt; </code></pre> <p>The <strong>generated code</strong> for this type looks like this:</p> <pre><code>/// &lt;remarks/&gt; [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("xsd", "2.0.50727.3038")] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(TypeName="StrucDoc.Paragraph", Namespace="urn:hl7-org:v3")] public partial class StrucDocParagraph { private StrucDocCaption captionField; private object[] itemsField; private string[] textField; private string idField; // ...fields for other attributes... /// &lt;remarks/&gt; public StrucDocCaption caption { get { return this.captionField; } set { this.captionField = value; } } /// &lt;remarks/&gt; [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("br", typeof(StrucDocBr))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("sub", typeof(StrucDocSub))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("sup", typeof(StrucDocSup))] // ...other possible nodes... public object[] Items { get { return this.itemsField; } set { this.itemsField = value; } } /// &lt;remarks/&gt; [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTextAttribute()] public string[] Text { get { return this.textField; } set { this.textField = value; } } /// &lt;remarks/&gt; [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute(DataType="ID")] public string ID { get { return this.idField; } set { this.idField = value; } } // ...properties for other attributes... } </code></pre> <p>If I <strong>deserialize</strong> an XML element where the paragraph node looks like this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;paragraph&gt;first line&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;third line&lt;/paragraph&gt; </code></pre> <p>The <strong>result</strong> is that the item and text arrays are read like this:</p> <pre><code>itemsField = new object[] { new StrucDocBr(), new StrucDocBr(), }; textField = new string[] { "first line", "third line", }; </code></pre> <p>From this there is no possible way to determine the exact order of the text and the other nodes.<br> If I <strong>serialize</strong> this again, the result looks exactly like this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;paragraph&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;first linethird line &lt;/paragraph&gt; </code></pre> <p>The default serializer just serializes the items first and then the text.</p> <p>I tried implementing <code>IXmlSerializable</code> on the StrucDocParagraph class so that I could control the deserialization and serialization of the content, but it's rather complex since there are so many classes involved and I didn't come to a solution yet because I don't know if the effort pays off.</p> <p>Is there some kind of <strong>easy workaround</strong> to this problem, or is it even possible by doing custom serialization via <code>IXmlSerializable</code>? Or should I just use <code>XmlDocument</code> or <code>XmlReader</code>/<code>XmlWriter</code> to process these documents?</p>
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