Question

I am changing some public field to private by providing corresponding public property.

for example:

public string Name;

is change to

private string _name;
public string Name
{
    get{ return _name;}
    set{ _name = value;}
}

However, what about the [XmlAttribute] attribute on the original public field?
i.e. does

[XmlAttribute]
public string Name;

becomes:

[XmlAttribute]
private string _name;
public string Name
{
    get{ return _name;}
    set{ _name = value;}
}

or

private string _name;
[XmlAttribute]
public string Name
{
    get{ return _name;}
    set{ _name = value;}
}

Answer 1

second solution.

By the way, you don’t need anymore (.net 3.0 and +) a private field, if you don’t do anything special in getter or setter.

You can use auto-implemented properties.

[XmlAttribute]
public string Name {get;set;}