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F-ES Sitecore wrote:

What's wrong with XML?

public enum ItemType
{
    Image,
    Icon,
}
public class Item
{
    public ItemType Type { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class Document
{
    public List<Item> Items = new List<Item>();
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var doc = new Document
        {
            Items =
            {
                new Item { Name = "foo", Type = ItemType.Icon, },
                new Item { Name = "bar", Type = ItemType.Icon, },
                new Item { Name = "snafu", Type = ItemType.Image, },
            },
        };

        // serialize to json, simple!
        var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(doc, Formatting.Indented);
        Console.WriteLine(json);

        // serialize to XML, kinda mouthful
        var xmlS = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Document));
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        xmlS.Serialize(new StringWriter(sb), doc);
        var xml = sb.ToString();
        Console.WriteLine(xml);
    }

{
  "Items": [
    {
      "Type": 1,
      "Name": "foo"
    },
    {
      "Type": 1,
      "Name": "bar"
    },
    {
      "Type": 0,
      "Name": "snafu"
    }
  ]
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<Document xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Items>
    <Item>
      <Type>Icon</Type>
      <Name>foo</Name>
    </Item>
    <Item>
      <Type>Icon</Type>
      <Name>bar</Name>
    </Item>
    <Item>
      <Type>Image</Type>
      <Name>snafu</Name>
    </Item>
  </Items>
</Document>

[{prop:"value"}]

{"1":"this", "2":"that"}

Super Lloyd wrote:

it would be brittle (what if people create an incorrect "properties.json file?)

• I already have a serializer where whole document can be saved / loaded in one method call (very much like JsonConvert) except it's much more compact than JSON... (i.e. smaller files), while still being versioning tolerant and strongly typed...

• save to zip archive is here to provide easy editing abilities so that (power-)user can, for example, rip image out or edit rectangle lists manually (although I am building an editor right now..), otherwise I could as well use my serializer!