Article
11/18/2011

XmlRootAttribute.DataType Property

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Gets or sets the XSD data type of the XML root element.

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

Remarks

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

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

For every XSD type that is mapped to a string, apply the XmlRootAttribute with its DataType property set to the XSD type. However, 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 XSD 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 data types, see the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) document, XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes.

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
recurringDate	String
duration	String
string	String
short	Int16
time	DateTime
token	String
unsignedByte	Byte
unsignedInt	UInt32
unsignedLong	UInt64
unsignedShort	UInt16

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.