XML-Deserialization of double value with German decimal separator in C#

Question

i'm trying to deserialize a Movie object from a "German" xml string:

string inputString = "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>"
    + "<movie title=\"Great Bollywood Stuff\">"
    + "<rating>5</rating>"
    + "<price>1,99</price>" // <-- Price with German decimal separator!
    + "</movie>";

XmlSerializer movieSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Movie));
Movie inputMovie;

using (StringReader sr = new StringReader(inputString))
{
    inputMovie = (Movie)movieSerializer.Deserialize(sr);
}
System.Console.WriteLine(inputMovie);

here the Movie class for reference:

[XmlRoot("movie")]
public class Movie
{

    [XmlAttribute("title")]
    public string Title { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("rating")]
    public int Rating { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("price")]
    public double Price { get; set; }

    public Movie()
    {

    }

    public Movie(string title, int rating, double price)
    {
        this.Title = title;
        this.Rating = rating;
        this.Price = price;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("Movie ");
        sb.Append("[Title=").Append(this.Title);
        sb.Append(", Rating=").Append(this.Rating);
        sb.Append(", Price=").Append(this.Price);
        sb.Append("]");

        return sb.ToString();
    }

}

as long i put a the <price> as 1.99 it works perfectly. when i use the German German decimal separator 1,99 it's not working anymore.

please advice

Answer 1

As already noted, that simply isn't a valid way of representing a numeric value in XML. It is fine for a string though. You could do:

[XmlIgnore]
public decimal Price {get;set;}

[XmlElement("price")]
public string PriceFormatted {
    get { return Price.ToString(...); }
    set { Price = decimal.Parse(value, ...); } 
}

Where "..." represents your choice of format specifier and CultureInfo