Question

I have a class which has a number of public fields that are marked with XML serializable attributes:

    [XmlAttribute]
    public string ExampleField = string.Empty;

I intend to refactor these fields (and only these fields) as auto-properties:

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

Will there be any issue with deserializing instances that were created using the previous version of the class?

Answer 1

It appears to work just fine…

(XmlSerializer is my wrapper to the .Net Xml Serialization classes.)

[Test]
public void XmlOutTest()
{
    var field = new Field { ExampleField = "TEXT" };
    var property = new Property() { ExampleField = "TEXT" };

    var fieldXml = XmlSerializer<Field>.Serialize(field);
    var propertyXml = XmlSerializer<Property>.Serialize(property);

    System.Console.WriteLine(fieldXml);
    System.Console.WriteLine(propertyXml);

    Assert.IsNotNull(XmlSerializer<Field>.Deserialize(propertyXml));
    Assert.IsNotNull(XmlSerializer<Property>.Deserialize(fieldXml));
}

public class Field
{
    public string ExampleField = string.Empty;
}

// changing root so I can use each other's xml when deserializing
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRoot("Field")]
public class Property
{
    public string ExampleField { get; set; }
}

Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<Field>
  <ExampleField>TEXT</ExampleField>
</Field>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<Field>
  <ExampleField>TEXT</ExampleField>
</Field>