Question

I’m deserializing a class called Method using .NET Serialization. Method contains a list of objects implementing IAction. I originally used the [XmlInclude] attribute to specify all classes which implement IAction.

But now, I’d like to change my program to load all the dll’s in a directory and strip out the classes which implement IAction. Then users can deserialize files which contain their actions implementing IAction.

I don’t control the classes which implement IAction anymore, therefore I can’t use [XmlInclude].

Is there a way to set this attribute at runtime? Or have a similar attribute set for the implementing class?

public class Method {     public List<Actions.IAction> Actions = new List<Actions.IAction>(); }  public interface IAction {     void DoExecute(); }  public static Type[] LoadActionPlugins(string pluginDirectoryPath) {     List<Type> pluginTypes = new List<Type>();      string[] filesInDirectory = Directory.GetFiles(pluginDirectoryPath, '*.dll', SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);     foreach (string pluginPath in filesInDirectory)     {         System.Reflection.Assembly actionPlugin = System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom(pluginPath);         Type[] assemblyTypes = actionPlugin.GetTypes();         foreach (Type type in assemblyTypes)         {             Type foundInterface = type.GetInterface('IAction');             if (foundInterface != null)             {                 pluginTypes.Add(type);             }         }     }      return pluginTypes.Count == 0 ? null : pluginTypes.ToArray(); } 

Answer 1

XmlSerializer has a constructor that accepts an array of types that will be accepted when deserializing:

public XmlSerializer(    Type type,    Type[] extraTypes ); 

You should be able to pass your array of assemblyTypes as the second argument.