Question

In a Portable Class Library, I have a class that contains a member with an XmlAnyElement attribute.

public partial class VariableWebServiceResponse {

    private List<System.Xml.XmlElement> anyField;

    public VariableWebServiceResponse () {
        this.anyField = new List<System.Xml.XmlElement>();
    }

    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAnyElementAttribute(Order=0)]
    public List<System.Xml.XmlElement> Any {
        get {
            return this.anyField;
        }
        set {
            this.anyField = value;
        }
    }
}

This type of class works perfectly in .NET 4.0 so I have code like:

    private T Deserialize<T>(VariableWebServiceResponse response)
    {
        var name = typeof(T).Name;
        var element = response.Any.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Name == name);
        return Deserialize<T>(element.OuterXml);
    }

    private static T Deserialize<T>(string xml)
    {
        return (T)new XmlSerializer(typeof(T)).Deserialize(new StringReader(xml));
    }

The problem now seems to be that XmlElement is not supported in a PCL.
So how can one achieve the same results in a PCL?

Answer 1

Sorry for the late reply. As you’ve noticed you can’t use XmlElement in portable, this is due to it only being available in .NET Framework. Silverlight, Phone and Windows Store apps do not expose this type.

However, we do have a replacement, when targeting .NET 4.0.3 and above in portable (which is required to get XLINQ support), you can use XElement* as a replacement with XmlAnyElementAttribute.

* I just filed a bug to make this a little clearer in the docs.