Question

I’m looking for a way to serialize a POCO that contains some read-only properties. In some Google and StackOverflow searches, I’ve seen the following suggestions:

• use DataContractSerializer; or
• use SoapFormatter or BinaryFormatter; or
• replace my readonly properties by read/write properties;

My classes are very simple, they look like:

public class MyClass
{
    public int Id { get; private set; }
    public string Name { get; private set; }
    public MyClass(int id, string name)
    {
        Id = id;
        Name = name;
    }
}

So,

• I don’t want to make my properties read/write. If they are read-only, it’s because my domain model asks for read-only properties. The domain model cannot change just because of this.
• I don’t want to use DataContractSerializer, as this would pollute my domain model with serialization-related stuff.
• BinaryFormatter is not a very good option, as the result is a byte[], and I would like to treat it as string (and I don’t want to deal with Encondings and alike when Deserializing my object).

What I would really like is an XmlSerializer class capable of serializing read-only properties.

Do you know of any such implementation? Or any other convenient solution?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Well, normally XmlSerializer can’t serialize read-only properties… however there is a possibility to serialize properties with an internal set : you need to generate the XML serialization assembly, and declare it as a “friend” assembly using the InternalsVisibleTo attribute. You can automate this by adding the following code to your project file :

  <Target Name="AfterBuild"
          DependsOnTargets="AssignTargetPaths;Compile;ResolveKeySource"
          Inputs="$(MSBuildAllProjects);@(IntermediateAssembly)"
          Outputs="$(OutputPath)$(_SGenDllName)">
    <SGen BuildAssemblyName="$(TargetFileName)"
          BuildAssemblyPath="$(OutputPath)"
          References="@(ReferencePath)"
          ShouldGenerateSerializer="true"
          UseProxyTypes="false"
          KeyContainer="$(KeyContainerName)"
          KeyFile="$(KeyOriginatorFile)"
          DelaySign="$(DelaySign)"
          ToolPath="$(SGenToolPath)">
      <Output TaskParameter="SerializationAssembly"
              ItemName="SerializationAssembly" />
    </SGen>
  </Target>

And in AssemblyInfo.cs :

[assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("MyAssembly.XmlSerializers")]

Of course, you might not want the properties to have an internal set, but if you do, the solution above should work.