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Asked: 2026-05-13T05:51:48+00:00

In .NET 3.5, I would like to create a custom attribute (say [NetDataMember]) that

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In .NET 3.5, I would like to create a custom attribute (say [NetDataMember]) that would switch the serialization behavior from DataContractSerializer to NetDataContractSerializer.

Basically, for a class A as illustrated below

[DataContract]
class A
{
  [DataMember]
  public int SimpleProperty { get; set; }

  [Transcient]
  public IBar ComplexProperty { get; set; }
}

I would like to obtain a serializer that would behave like DataContractSerializer by default, but that would be overriden with NetDataContractSerializer for properties marked with [NetDataMember].

Any idea how to design a serializer that would achieve such behavior?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There’s no “out-of-the-box” way in WCF to do this – but a lot of really smart people have already tackled that problem.

    Check out Aaron Skonnard’s blog post on the NetDataContractSerializer in which he present a behavior you can put on your data contracts as an attribute:

    [NetDataContractFormat]

    on your service interface (for all methods) or on a single method will use the NetDataContractSerializer for that call. You need to define this per operation or service – not on your data contracts.

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