Article
11/18/2011

XmlTextAttribute.DataType Property

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Gets or sets the XML Schema definition (XSD) language data type of the text generated by the XmlSerializer.

Namespace: System.Xml.Serialization
Assembly: System.Xml (in System.Xml.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
Public Property DataType As String

public string DataType { get; set; }

Property Value

Type: System.String
An XML Schema (XSD) data type, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) document, XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes.

Exceptions

Exception	Condition
Exception	The XML Schema data type you have specified cannot be mapped to the .NET data type.
InvalidOperationException	The XML Schema data type you have specified is invalid for the property and cannot be converted to the member type.

Remarks

Setting the DataType property to an XML Schema simple data type affects the format of the generated XML. For example, setting the property to "date" causes the generated text to be formatted in the general date style, for example: 2001-08-31. By contrast, setting the property to "dateTime" results in a specific instant as defined by the International Organization for Standardization document 8601, "Representations of Dates and Times", for example: 2001-08-15T06:59:11.0508456-07:00.

The following table lists the XML Schema simple data types with their .NET equivalents.

XSD data type	.NET data type
anyURI	String
base64Binary	Array of Byte objects
boolean	Boolean
byte	SByte
date	DateTime
dateTime	DateTime
decimal	Decimal
double	Double
ENTITY	String
ENTITIES	String
float	Single
gDay	String
gMonth	String
gMonthDay	String
gYear	String
gYearMonth	String
hexBinary	Array of Byte objects
ID	String
IDREF	String
IDREFS	String
int	Int32
integer	String
language	String
long	Int64
Name	String
NCName	String
negativeInteger	String
NMTOKEN	String
NMTOKENS	String
normalizedString	String
nonNegativeInteger	String
nonPositiveInteger	String
NOTATION	String
positiveInteger	String
QName	XmlQualifiedName
duration	String
string	String
short	Int16
time	DateTime
token	String
unsignedByte	Byte
unsignedInt	UInt32
unsignedLong	UInt64
unsignedShort	UInt16

For the XML Schema base64Binary and hexBinary data types, use an array of Byte structures, and apply a XmlTextAttribute with the DataType set to "base64Binary" or "hexBinary", as appropriate. For the XML Schema time and date data types, use the DateTime type and apply the XmlTextAttribute with the DataType set to "date" or "time".

For every XML Schema data type that is mapped to a string, apply the XmlTextAttribute with its DataType property set to the XML Schema data type. Note that this does not change the serialization format, only the schema for the member.

Note:
The property is case-sensitive, so you must set it exactly to one of the XML Schema data types.

Note:
Passing binary data as an XML element is more efficient than passing it as an XML attribute.

For more information about

XML Schema data types, see the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) document, XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes.

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.