Get rid of root element when serializing array

Question

Here\'s a code example:

public class Person
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}

...

Answer 1

IMO you should use a top-level object, I.e.

[XmlRoot("whatever")]
public class Foo {
    [XmlElement("Person")]
    public List<Person> People {get;set;}        
}

Which should serialize as a "whatever" element with multiple "Person" sub-elements.

Answer 2

That's a malformed XML you want, not possible to obtain it via XmlSerializer, but you can change ArrayOfPersno element name to smothing else:

example:

XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person[]),
                                     new XmlRootAttribute("Persons"));

will give you:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Persons xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Person>
    <FirstName>John</FirstName>
    <LastName>Smith</LastName>
  </Person>
  ...