How to Populate a Dictionary with XML Data Using C#?

Populating Dictionary with XML Data

Given an empty Dictionary and custom XML in the format:

<items>
  <item>

To populate the dictionary with data from the XML and serialize it back, we'll utilize a custom class and the XmlSerializer class.

Serialization using Custom Class

1. Define a custom class item to act as a temporary container for the XML data:

public class item
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public int id;
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string value;
}

2. Create an XmlSerializer instance with the appropriate root and type attributes:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(item[]), 
                                 new XmlRootAttribute() { ElementName = "items" });

3. Serialize the dictionary by converting it to an array of item objects and serializing the array:

serializer.Serialize(stream, 
              dict.Select(kv=>new item(){id = kv.Key,value=kv.Value}).ToArray() );

Deserialization using Custom Class

1. Deserialize the XML into an array of item objects:

var orgDict = ((item[])serializer.Deserialize(stream))
               .ToDictionary(i => i.id, i => i.value);

Alternative: Using XElement

If you prefer to use the XElement class:

Serialization using XElement

1. Create an XElement object representing the XML structure:

XElement xElem = new XElement(
                    "items",
                    dict.Select(x => new XElement("item",new XAttribute("id", x.Key),new XAttribute("value", x.Value)))
                 );
var xml = xElem.ToString(); //xElem.Save(...);

Deserialization using XElement

1. Parse the XML into an XElement object:

XElement xElem2 = XElement.Parse(xml); //XElement.Load(...)

2. Extract data from the XML using LINQ and populate the dictionary:

var newDict = xElem2.Descendants("item")
                    .ToDictionary(x => (int)x.Attribute("id"), x => (string)x.Attribute("value"));

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