When a class is inherited from List<>, XmlSerializer doesn't serialize other attributes
.net, c#, ienumerable, list, xml-serialization
Solution
This is by design. I don't know why this decision was made, but it is stated in the documentation:
- Classes that implement ICollection or IEnumerable. Only collections are serialized, not public properties.
(Look under "Items that can be serialized" section). Someone has filed a bug against this, but it won't be changed - here, Microsoft also confirms that not including the properties for classes implementing `ICollection` is in fact the behaviour of XmlSerializer.
A workaround would be to either:
- Implement `IXmlSerializable` and control serialization yourself.
or
- Change MyClass so it has a public property of type List (and don't subclass it).
or
- Use DataContractSerializer, which handles this scenario.
Problem
I'm having a situation here, I need my class to be inherited from `List<ItemType>`, but when I do this XmlSerializer does not serialize any property or field declared in my class, the following sample demonstrates: ``` public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); DoSerialize(); } private void DoSerialize() { MyClass obj = new MyClass(); obj.Add(1); obj.Add(2); obj.Add(3); XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass)); StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); s.Serialize(sw, obj); } } [Serializable] [XmlRoot] public class MyClass : List<int> { public MyClass() { } int myAttribute = 2011; [XmlAttribute] public int MyAttribute { get { return myAttribute; } set { myAttribute = value; } } } ``` the resulting XML: ``` <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <ArrayOfInt xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <int>1</int> <int>2</int> <int>3</int> </ArrayOfInt> ```