Question

I wonder if there is any way to serialize to xml a class that contains list of generics?
It looks like this:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var o = new ContainerClass();
        o.Values = new List<SomeClass> {new SomeClass<int>(), new SomeClass<long>()};

        XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ContainerClass));
        MemoryStream buffer = new MemoryStream();
        using (TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter(buffer))
        {
            xs.Serialize(writer, o); // InvalidOperationException here
        }
        var xml = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer.ToArray());
    }
}

public class ContainerClass
{
    public List<SomeClass> Values { get; set; }
}

public class SomeClass
{
}

public class SomeClass<T> : SomeClass
{
}

I know that there is a way to pass extra types to the serializer, but there is no way to now every combination that could probably appear.

I’ve tried to implement IXmlSerializable i various ways without success.

Any idea how to deal with it?

I am also open for external libraries if there is any that can handle it.

Answer 1

I’ve found YAXLib which does the job.