Question

I leveraging the XmlSerializer to convert to/from XML. Here is an example class:

[XmlRootAttribute('myClass')] public class MyClass {     private string someField;      [XmlElement('someField')]     public string SomeField {         get {             return someField;         }          set {             someField = value;         }     } } 

The XML would look like the following:

<myClass>     <someField>Some Value</someField> </myClass> 

I want to be able to add an attribute to this class. For example, sometimes I need to add change tracking to the element. An attribute, say ‘IdRef’, would be added to the myClass element.

<myClass t:IdRef='someGuid' xmlns:t='uri:some:uri'>     <someField>SomeValue</someField> </myClass> 

I’m hoping to keep the IdRef attribute out of the main POCO class. Also, since there are many classes like the one above, so I’m hoping not to have to create a subclass for each one, adding the extended attribute. Maybe creating a custom implementation using the IXmlSerializer interface?

UPDATE I’m going with the simple solution described below. I think I was trying to ‘over think’ this implementation and adding complexity where it wasn’t needed.

Answer 1

What do I think? I think you’ll have to stick them in your ‘POCO’ class, but you can hide them away in a region labeled something like ‘extra serialization markup properties’ and use other attributes to make them mostly invisible to consumers of your class.