XML serialization of hash table(C#3.0)

Question

Hi I am trying to serialize a hash table but not happening

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Hashtable ht = new Hashtable         


        

Answer 1

First of all starting with C# 2.0 you can use type safe version of very old Hashtable which come from .NET 1.0. So you can use Dictionary.

Starting with .NET 3.0 you can use DataContractSerializer. So you can rewrite you code like following

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        MyHashtable ht = new MyHashtable();        

        DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            ht.Add(dt.AddDays(i), i);           
        SerializeToXmlAsFile(typeof(Hashtable), ht);
    }

where SerializeToXmlAsFile and MyHashtable type you define like following:

[CollectionDataContract (Name = "AllMyHashtable", ItemName = "MyEntry",
                         KeyName = "MyDate", ValueName = "MyValue")]
public class MyHashtable : Dictionary { }

private void SerializeToXmlAsFile(Type targetType, Object targetObject)
    {
        try {
            string fileName = @"C:\output.xml";
            DataContractSerializer s = new DataContractSerializer (targetType);
            XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings ();
            settings.Indent = true;
            settings.IndentChars = ("    ");
            using (XmlWriter w = XmlWriter.Create (fileName, settings)) {
                s.WriteObject (w, targetObject);
                w.Flush ();
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; }
    }

This code produce C:\output.xml file with the following contain:

    
        2010-06-09T22:30:00.9474539+02:00
        0
    
    
        2010-06-10T22:30:00.9474539+02:00
        1
    
    

So how we can see all names of the elements of the destination XML files we can free define.