How to Serialize and Deserialize a Dictionary from Custom XML Without Using XElement?

Serializing and Deserializing to a Dictionary from Custom XML Without XElement

When presented with an empty Dictionary and custom XML data, such as the example provided:

<items>
  <item>

the task of populating the dictionary with the provided keys and values and serializing it back into XML can be achieved without using XElement.

Deserialization

A temporary item class can be introduced:

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

An example dictionary can be declared like so:

Dictionary<int, string> dict = new Dictionary<int, string>()
{
    {1,"one"}, {2,"two"}
};

To deserialize the XML into the dictionary, create an XmlSerializer object:

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

The deserialization process can then be performed:

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

Serialization

To serialize the dictionary back into XML, follow these steps:

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

Alternative: Using XElement (If Preferred)

If XElement is preferred, the following approach can be used:

Serialization

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

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

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