Set anchor tag name during serialization using YamlDotNet?

[Nidhi1819]

          This sounds interesting. Is there also an easy way to control the anchor naming during serialization? I would like to use YamlDotNet to create a stable file format, that changes as little as possible during multiple deserialize, change, serialize cycles, so different versions of the files can be compared and merged easily.

Originally posted by @rohahn in #227 (comment)

[Nidhi1819]

I am looking for answer to this thread. I am using XML file and generating YAML out of it using YamlDotNet. The YAML that gets generated has anchor tags but the name of the tags is not meaningfully. I want to control the name given to anchor tag and give a more meaningful name to it. Is there any easy way to do it or will have to write a custom emitter for it.

[EdwardCooke]

I think you can replace this implementation with your own and be able to create more meaningful names. However, you may not be able to get meaningful context to generate a name that makes sense.

YamlDotNet/YamlDotNet/Serialization/ObjectGraphVisitors/AnchorAssigner.cs

Line 29 in 9a5900f

public sealed class AnchorAssigner : PreProcessingPhaseObjectGraphVisitorSkeleton, IAliasProvider

[EdwardCooke]

Since there was a solution provided with no feedback I’m closing this issue. If you disagree go ahead and reopen it and we can discuss more.

[BBoldenow-Alt]

Since there was a solution provided with no feedback I’m closing this issue. If you disagree go ahead and reopen it and we can discuss more.

@EdwardCooke - I think this is reasonable, but am having trouble getting the IAliasProvider implementation to trigger. I mostly copied the AnchorAssigner, but customized the name portion. I then provided this to my serializer like this:

var anchorNaming = new CustomAnchorAssigner(new List<IYamlTypeConverter>()
{
    customConverter1,
    customConverter2,
    customConverter3,
});

var serializerBuilder = new SerializerBuilder()
    .ConfigureDefaultValuesHandling(DefaultValuesHandling.OmitEmptyCollections)
    .ConfigureDefaultValuesHandling(DefaultValuesHandling.OmitNull)
    .WithTypeConverter(customConverter1)
    .WithTypeConverter(customConverter2)
    .WithTypeConverter(customConverter3)
    .WithPreProcessingPhaseObjectGraphVisitor(anchorNaming)

This triggers all of the VisitObject events, but the GetAlias method is never called. Is there something I'm missing to use this Alias Provider?

Edit:

I was able to get this working by adding the following line to the SerializerBuilder

.WithEmissionPhaseObjectGraphVisitor(args => new AnchorAssigningObjectGraphVisitor(args.InnerVisitor, args.EventEmitter, anchorNaming),
w => w.InsteadOf<AnchorAssigningObjectGraphVisitor>())

[Schrolli91]

@BBoldenow-Alt @EdwardCooke
I am a little bit confused, how to implement that.
Is there a little more complete example, how to get a custom anchor naming working?

EDIT: Opened a new Issue under #939

[EdwardCooke]

Please open a new issue and I’ll try and build out an example in the next bit. I have very limited access to the internet right now.