Q:

Encoding char type element in SOAP XML

I am having some problems encoding the char (unitType). Below is the example request from the .NET wdsl page. I need to know what format to encode the character into, because putting it straight into the XML does not work. Does .NET (3.5) SOAP require some specific format?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <soap12:Envelope
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
 xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
   <soap12:Body>
     <DiagnosticAnalysis xmlns="http://www.somewhere.com/">
       <tuple>int</tuple>
       <unitID>int</unitID>
       <unitType>char</unitType>
       </DiagnosticAnalysis>   
   </soap12:Body> 
 </soap12:Envelope>

Passing in something like <unitType>L</unitType> does not work, and gives me the error below:

There is an error in XML document (7, 37). ---> Input string was not in a correct format.

A:

char is serialized as a number (int) by the XmlSerializer. Since it appears you are trying to build the XML from scratch, try setting the XML to <unitType>76</unitType> (76 is the value for L).
I tested using the following code in LinqPad:
void Main()
{
    var m = new MyClass();
    m.UnitType = 'L';

    var serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass));
    using(var sr = new StringWriter())
    {
        serializer.Serialize(sr, m);
        Console.WriteLine(sr.GetStringBuilder().ToString());
    }
}

public class MyClass
{
    public char UnitType { get; set; }
}

Output is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<MyClass xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <UnitType>76</UnitType>
</MyClass>

