c# - Xml Sequence deserialization with RestSharp

Question

I have this xml feed from an API with a XML sequence.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Function>
    <Cmd>2002</Cmd>
    <Status>1</Status>
    <Cmd>2003</Cmd>
    <Status>0</Status>
    <Cmd>2004</Cmd>
    <Status>0</Status>
    <Cmd>1012</Cmd>
    <Status>3</Status>
    <Cmd>2006</Cmd>
    <Status>0</Status>
    <Cmd>2007</Cmd>
    <Status>0</Status>
    ...
</Function>

I already tried a few options for deserialization with Restsharp. Ideally I would like to have something like the following, but it's obviously not working.

public class MyResponse
{
    public List<Setting> Settings { get; set;}
}

public class Setting
{
    public int Cmd { get; set; }
    public int Status { get; set; }
}

Thank you

Answer 1

You can use the DotNetXmlDeserializer of RestSharp to make Microsoft's XmlSerializer do the actual deserialization. Define your MyResponse class as follows, using XML serialization attributes to specify element names and also special handling for the Cmd/Status alternating sequence of elements:

[XmlRoot("Function")]
public class MyResponse
{
    [XmlIgnore]
    public List<Setting> Settings { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Proxy property to convert Settings to an alternating sequence of Cmd / Status elements.
    /// </summary>
    [Browsable(false), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
    [XmlAnyElement]
    public XElement[] Elements 
    {
        get
        {
            if (Settings == null)
                return null;
            return Settings.SelectMany(s => new[] { new XElement("Cmd", s.Cmd), new XElement("Status", s.Status) }).ToArray();
        }
        set
        {
            if (value == null)
                Settings = null;
            else
                Settings = value.Where(e => e.Name == "Cmd").Zip(value.Where(e => e.Name == "Status"), (cmd, status) => new Setting { Cmd = (int)cmd, Status = (int)status }).ToList();
        }
    }
}

Then deserialize as follows:

        var serializer = new DotNetXmlDeserializer();
        var myResponse = serializer.Deserialize<MyResponse>(response);

Prototype fiddle.