Control XML Serialization from DataSet -- Attributes on "TableName element"

Question

Hope I chose the correct forum.

I have a dataset object with one table that comes to me from a common custom component's GetDS method. I need to pass XML to another process (chunked as byte array). I have it all working but the XML is missing some attributes that the consuming process expects.

I create a dataset object and can control the name of the TableName (root element) and the row like this:

da.Fill(ds, "Foo")
ds.DataSetName = "FooUpload"

I use the GetXML method to serialize to XML that looks like the following:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?> 
<FooUpload>
  <Foo>
  <FooMasterID>483</FooMasterID> 
  <Country>27</Country> 
  <PaymentCode>ANN</PaymentCode> 
  <Amount>132</Amount> 
  <PaidDate>2012-12-31 00:00:00</PaidDate> 
  <PaidBy>FooServices</PaidBy> 
  </Foo>
</FooUpload>

The calling process expects

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?> 
<FooUpload **ClientCode="FOOO" RecordCount="1" CreateDate="2008-12-09T15:02:18.920" CreateUser="valli"**>
  <Foo>
  <FooMasterID>483</FooMasterID> 
  <Country>27</Country> 
  <PaymentCode>ANN</PaymentCode> 
  <Amount>132</Amount> 
  <PaidDate>2012-12-31 00:00:00</PaidDate> 
  <PaidBy>FooServices</PaidBy> 
  </Foo>
</FooUpload>

Note the attributes on the FooUpload element. This node is the name of the DataTable in the DataSet.

I have searched for how to control the XMLSerializer and find lots of examples for custom objects. I even found examples of setting the column mapping to be MappingType.Attribute which is close but I need to do this with the root element which is actually the TableName for the dataset.

I feel that I am close and if I do not find a more elegant solution I will have to create a hack like looping and spitting out changed string plus rest of the XML.

Thanks in advance (fingers crossed)!

Answer 1

You can feed the output of GetXML into a XmlDocument and add the attributes afterwards. For example:

 XmlDocument xdoc = new XmlDocument();
 xdoc.LoadXml(ds.GetXml());
 XmlAttribute attr=xdoc.CreateAttribute("ClientCode");
 attr.Value = "FOOOO";
 xdoc.DocumentElement.Attributes.Append(attr);

Then you can save the xdoc into a file, or put it into a string, for example:

 XmlTextWriter xw = new XmlTextWriter(new MemoryStream(),Encoding.UTF8);
 xdoc.Save(xw);
 xw.BaseStream.Position = 0;
 StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(xw.BaseStream);
 string result = sr.ReadToEnd();

Answer 2

This looks pretty much as what you are looking for.