[Zilog80]

I decided to write a 101 XML/JSON tutorial

I have seen already several buddies around HF having troubles using XML with LoadXml, XPath, ...

My how-to does not make use for LoadXml. It use serialization and works fine also with JSON with out re-writting the whole code each time we need "load" an XML with different tags/properties, because it use Generics.

Also i'll show you a really nice Visual Studio feature introduced some time ago (think its available since VS 2012) and maybe some people don't know: Paste JSON or XML as VB.NET or C# class.

Part one. How to create 'our' XML or JSON class: Visual Studio Paste Special

Suppose we have a XML response (file, stream or what ever you want) like @antibiotic1 post (hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5353238):

PHP Code


<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<sdnList xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://tempuri.org/sdnList.xsd">
  <publshInformation>
    <Publish_Date>07/21/2016</Publish_Date>
    <Record_Count>5393</Record_Count>
  </publshInformation>
  <sdnEntry>
    <uid>36</uid>
  </sdnEntry>
</sdnList> 


or we have a JSON response (again: file, stream, ...) like:

PHP Code


<?php 
{"menu": {
  "id": "file",
  "value": "File",
  "popup": {
    "menuitem": [
      {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"},
      {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"},
      {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"}
    ]
  }
}} 


We can "paste" that XML and/or JSON into Visual Studio and Visual Studio generates it self the properly classes we need.

[img]http://i.stack.imgur.com/N1KBR.jpg[/img]

Pro-Tip #1: Paste Special option menu it only shows up when you have a .cs or .vb file open. If you are on Form dessign view will not show up
Pro-Tip #2: Paste Special >> Paste XML as Classes only shows if your projet target is .NET 4.5 or above.

So, copy @antibiotic1 XML and then in Visual Studio, with .cs or .vb file open select Paste XML as Classes.
And voilà, Visual Studio generate all this code automatically:

Spoiler (Click to View)



Part two. Deserialization or not deserialization-that is the question

As i said before, here we are using serialization stuff instead LoadXml methods. We use generics to hande any XML/JSON structure.
Also we use standard .NET Framework namespaces, we not requiered any NuGet for JSON, like JSON.NET or 'special' libraries.

I created a couple tiny classes for manage XML and JSON. Basically: Serialize data objet to file and Deserialize file to object

You can put this classes on Helpers folder to c&p on every project you need to use.

Part three. Show me a demo!

Once we get classes pasted AS we can do this:



We have a XML file (j:\temp\data.xml). The file content is @antibiotic1 sample posted above.

As you can see, with only 1 line code we have an sdnList object called myData (sdnList class were generated with Paste Special)

We can query any method from myData, change, or whatever.

And also, with 1 line code we can save that changes to a file (XML or JSON)



The full source:

Spoiler (Click to View)



Hope it helps someone and lets a bit clear now to handle XML/JSON data. ;)

[HFDone]

theres already loads of examples for it if just ppl use the search button