Question

Here’s my class:

[Serializable()]
    [XmlRootAttribute("Language")]
    public class Language : ISerializable
    {
        string Id {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string Part2B {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string Part2T {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string Part1 {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string Scope {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string LanguageType {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string RefName {
            get;
            set;
        }
        string Comment {
            get;
            set;
        }

snipped

I’m returning an array of them from a Mono web service, like this:

[WebMethod()]
        [ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat=ResponseFormat.Json)]
        public Language[] GetLanguages()
        {
            List<Language> languages;
            languages = GetLanguageList();
            return languages.ToArray();
        }

But what I get is this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ArrayOfLanguage xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
  <Language />
  <Language />
  <Language />
  <Language />
</ArrayOfLanguage>

Why are the members not getting serialized?

Answer 1

Your properties are not public.
XmlSerialization only serialises public fields and properties.

XML serialization is the process of converting an object’s public properties and fields to a serial format

The default accessibility for fields and properties (indeed all members) is private in c#.

Also implementing ISerializable has no effect on XmlSerialization (that would be IXmlSerializable).
Neither does the [Serializable] attribute, instead you need one or more of these.