Question

I’m using a dictionary to hold some parameters and I’ve just found out that it’s not possible to serialize anything that implements IDictionary (unable to serialize IDictionary).

As a workaround I’d like to convert may dictionary into a string for serialization and then convert back to a dictionary when required.

As I’m trying to improve my LINQ this seems like a good place to do it but I’m not sure how to start.

This is how I’d implement it without LINQ:

/// <summary>
/// Get / Set the extended properties of the FTPS processor
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>Can't serialize the Dictionary object so convert to a string (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950721.aspx)</remarks>
public Dictionary<string, string> FtpsExtendedProperties
{
    get 
    {
        Dictionary<string, string> dict = new Dictionary<string, string>();

        // Get the Key value pairs from the string
        string[] kvpArray = m_FtpsExtendedProperties.Split('|');

        foreach (string kvp in kvpArray)
        {
            // Seperate the key and value to build the dictionary
            string[] pair = kvp.Split(',');
            dict.Add(pair[0], pair[1]);
        }

        return dict; 
    }

    set 
    {
        string newProperties = string.Empty;

        // Iterate through the dictionary converting the value pairs into a string
        foreach (KeyValuePair<string,string> kvp in value)
        {
            newProperties += string.Format("{0},{1}|", kvp.Key, kvp.Value);    
        }

        // Remove the last pipe serperator
        newProperties = newProperties.Substring(0, newProperties.Length - 1);
    }
}

Answer 1

In the context of your code

/// Get / Set the extended properties of the FTPS processor
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>Can't serialize the Dictionary object so convert to a string (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950721.aspx)</remarks>
public Dictionary<string, string> FtpsExtendedProperties
{
get 
{

Dictionary<string, string> dict = m_FtpsExtendedProperties.Split('|')
      .Select(s => s.Split(','))
      .ToDictionary(key => key[0].Trim(), value => value[1].Trim());

    return dict; 
}

set 
{

        // NOTE: for large dictionaries, this can use
        // a StringBuilder instead of a string for cumulativeText

        // does not preserve Dictionary order (if that is important - reorder the String.Format)
    string newProperties = 
              value.Aggregate ("",
                      (cumulativeText,kvp) => String.Format("{0},{1}|{2}", kvp.Key, kvp.Value, cumulativeText));

        // Remove the last pipe serperator
        newProperties = newProperties.Substring(0, newProperties.Length - 1);

        }
    }

Haven’t tested this, but the functions used should give you some idea of how to do it fairly succinctly with LINQ