Question

.NET 2

Actually there are methods to XML serialize a List<T>.
What if I have an object that has a public LinkedList<T> member?

Without creating a public duplicate as List<T> from LinkedList<T>. Maybe a way to control the Xml serialization like binary (OnSerializing, OnDeserializing).

Will be impossible to XML serialize a object with a public LinkedList<T> member?

EDIT:

An test example to fix with IXmlSerializable

using System.Xml.Serialization;

public class Foo : IXmlSerializable {        
    private int _Id;
    private string _Name;

    public string Name {
        get { return _Name; }
        set { _Name = value; }
    }        
    
    private int _Age;
    public string Age {
        get { return _Age; }
        set { _Age = value; }
    }
    
    private LinkedList<Bar> _linkedList = new LinkedList<Bar>();
    [XmlArray()]
    public List<Bar> MyLinkedList {
        get { return _linkedList; }
        set { _linkedList = value; }
    }
    
    public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() {
        return null;
    }
    
    public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) {
        _Name = reader.ReadString(); // ? '            
        _Age = reader.ReadString(); // ? '
        // foreach MyLinkedList 
    }
    
    public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) {
        writer.WriteString(_Name); // ? '
        writer.WriteString(_Age); // ? '
        // foreach MyLinkedList 
    }
}

Answer 1

It is impossible with XmlSerializer without implementing IXmlSerializable or creating a public duplicate as List<T> from LinkedList<T>. DataContractSerializer is capable of doing this but unfortunately it is not available in .NET 2.0.

---

UPDATE:

Here’s an example of implementing IXmlSerializable to serialize a LinkedList<T>:

public class Foo : IXmlSerializable
{
    public LinkedList<int> List { get; set; }

    public XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return null;
    }

    public void ReadXml(XmlReader reader)
    {
        throw new System.NotImplementedException();
    }

    public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
    {
        writer.WriteStartElement("List");
        foreach (var item in List)
        {
            writer.WriteElementString("Item", item.ToString());    
        }
        writer.WriteEndElement();
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var foo = new Foo
        {
            List = new LinkedList<int>(new[] { 1, 2, 3 })
        };
        var serializer = new XmlSerializer(foo.GetType());
        serializer.Serialize(Console.Out, foo);
    }
}

As you can see it’s basically doing the serialization by hand so there’s no much benefit of the XmlSerializer here.