XML serialization of interface property

user_138585 0
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I would like to XML serialize an object that has (among other) a property of type IModelObject (which is an interface).

public class Example
{
    public IModelObject Model { get; set; }
}

When I try to serialize an object of this class, I receive the following error:
"Cannot serialize member Example.Model of type Example because it is an interface."

I understand that the problem is that an interface cannot be serialized. However, the concrete Model object type is unknown until runtime.

Replacing the IModelObject interface with an abstract or concrete type and use inheritance with XMLInclude is possible, but seems like an ugly workaround.

Any suggestions?

serialization .net c#
9 Answers

Unfortuantely for me, I had a case where the class to be serialized had properties that had interfaces as properties as well, so I needed to recursively process each property. Also, some of the interface properties were marked as [XmlIgnore], so I wanted to skip over those. I took ideas that I found on this thread and added some things to it to make it recursive. Only the deserialization code is shown here:

void main()
{
    var serializer = GetDataContractSerializer<MyObjectWithCascadingInterfaces>();
    using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(xmlPath, FileMode.Open))
    {
        XmlDictionaryReader reader = XmlDictionaryReader.CreateTextReader(stream, new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas());
        var obj = (MyObjectWithCascadingInterfaces)serializer.ReadObject(reader);

        // your code here
    }
}

DataContractSerializer GetDataContractSerializer<T>() where T : new()
{
    Type[] types = GetTypesForInterfaces<T>();

    // Filter out duplicates
    Type[] result = types.ToList().Distinct().ToList().ToArray();

    var obj = new T();
    return new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType(), types);
}

Type[] GetTypesForInterfaces<T>() where T : new()
{
    return GetTypesForInterfaces(typeof(T));
}

Type[] GetTypesForInterfaces(Type T)
{
    Type[] result = new Type[0];
    var obj = Activator.CreateInstance(T);

    // get the type for all interface properties that are not marked as "XmlIgnore"
    Type[] types = T.GetProperties()
        .Where(p => p.PropertyType.IsInterface && 
            !p.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnoreAttribute), false).Any())
        .Select(p => p.GetValue(obj, null).GetType())
        .ToArray();

    result = result.ToList().Concat(types.ToList()).ToArray();

    // do the same for each of the types identified
    foreach (Type t in types)
    {
        Type[] embeddedTypes = GetTypesForInterfaces(t);
        result = result.ToList().Concat(embeddedTypes.ToList()).ToArray();
    }
    return result;
}
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