Is it possible to deserialize XML into List<T>?

Given the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<user_list>
   <user>
      <id>1</id>
      <name>Joe</name>
   </user>
   <user>
      <id>2</id>
      <name>John</name>
   </user>
</user_list>

And the following class:

public class User {
   [XmlElement("id")]
   public Int32 Id { get; set; }

   [XmlElement("name")]
   public String Name { get; set; }
}

Is it possible to use XmlSerializer to deserialize the xml into a List<User> ? If so, what type of additional attributes will I need to use, or what additional parameters do I need to use to construct the XmlSerializer instance?

An array ( User[] ) would be acceptable, if a bit less preferable.

You can encapsulate the list trivially:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

[XmlRoot("user_list")]
public class UserList
{
    public UserList() {Items = new List<User>();}
    [XmlElement("user")]
    public List<User> Items {get;set;}
}
public class User
{
    [XmlElement("id")]
    public Int32 Id { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("name")]
    public String Name { get; set; }
}

static class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        XmlSerializer ser= new XmlSerializer(typeof(UserList));
        UserList list = new UserList();
        list.Items.Add(new User { Id = 1, Name = "abc"});
        list.Items.Add(new User { Id = 2, Name = "def"});
        list.Items.Add(new User { Id = 3, Name = "ghi"});
        ser.Serialize(Console.Out, list);
    }
}

If you decorate the User class with the XmlType to match the required capitalization:

[XmlType("user")]
public class User
{
   ...
}

Then the XmlRootAttribute on the XmlSerializer ctor can provide the desired root and allow direct reading into List<>:

    // e.g. my test to create a file
    using (var writer = new FileStream("users.xml", FileMode.Create))
    {
        XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<User>),  
            new XmlRootAttribute("user_list"));
        List<User> list = new List<User>();
        list.Add(new User { Id = 1, Name = "Joe" });
        list.Add(new User { Id = 2, Name = "John" });
        list.Add(new User { Id = 3, Name = "June" });
        ser.Serialize(writer, list);
    }

...

    // read file
    List<User> users;
    using (var reader = new StreamReader("users.xml"))
    {
        XmlSerializer deserializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<User>),  
            new XmlRootAttribute("user_list"));
        users = (List<User>)deserializer.Deserialize(reader);
    }

Credit: based on answer from YK1.

Yes, it will serialize and deserialize a List<>. Just make sure you use the [XmlArray] attribute if in doubt.

[Serializable]
public class A
{
    [XmlArray]
    public List<string> strings;
}

This works with both Serialize() and Deserialize().

Is it possible to deserialize XML into List<T>?

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