Question

I have a simple type that explicitly implemets an Interface.

public interface IMessageHeader {     string FromAddress { get; set; }     string ToAddress   { get; set; } }  [Serializable] public class MessageHeader:IMessageHeader {   private string from;   private string to;    [XmlAttribute('From')]   string IMessageHeade.FromAddress   {     get { return this.from;}     set { this.from = value;}   }   [XmlAttribute('To')]  string IMessageHeade.ToAddress  {     get { return this.to;}     set { this.to = value;}  } } 

Is there a way to Serialize and Deserialize objects of type IMessageHeader??

I got the following error when tried

‘Cannot serialize interface IMessageHeader’

Answer 1

You cannot serialize IMessageHeader because you can’t do Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(IMessageHeader)) which is what serialization is going to do under the covers. You need a concrete type.

You can do typeof(MessageHeader) or you could say, have an instance of MessageHeader and do

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(instance.GetType())