Question

For years, I’ve been following MS best practices on how to write a custom exception class (don’t even remember if it was first enforced by FxCop or by an article I read) and wrote my classes the following way:

using System;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;

[Serializable]
public sealed class MyGreatException : Exception
{
  public MyGreatException()
  : base() {}

  public MyGreatException(string message)
  : base(message) {}

  public MyGreatException(string message, Exception inner)
  : base(message, inner) {}

  private MyGreatException(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
  : base(info, context) {}
}

Today these classes get rejected by Windows 8 App Cert Kit:

 .API System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo in MSCORLIB, PUBLICKEYTOKEN=B77A5C561934E089 is not supported for this application type. com.visionobjects.myscript.hwr.dll calls this API.
 .API System.SerializableAttribute in MSCORLIB, PUBLICKEYTOKEN=B77A5C561934E089 is not supported for this application type. com.visionobjects.myscript.hwr.dll calls this API.

(among other rejects…)

So now that it’s 2012, how do I write a custom exception class? Do I just have to remove [Serializable] and the private constructor supposed to deal with custom serialization (which I don’t need anyway)?

---

EDIT

I removed [Serializable] and the private constructor. I guess that makes my custom exception class non serializable. As this is a class exposed by a class library, how does that impact the code using the library?

Answer 1

It doesn’t look like System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo is supported yet in the Metro-compatible version of the .NET framework. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh454059(v=vs.110).aspx for details about which classes they’re choosing to support from the System.Runtime namespace. Keep in mind, this is subject to change.

So yes, take out your Serialization attribute and the private constructor.