If you try to serialize a class that has a public member of an interface type to xml file using the regular .net XmlSerializer, you will get an error: “Cannot serialize member {m} of type {t} because it is an interface.” ({m} and {t} are placeholders).
In this post I suggest a workaround to this issue.
Consider the following scenario:
You have an object model like this:
1: public class Car
2: {
3: public string Model { get; set; }
4: public int Year { get; set; }
5: public IEngine Engine { get; set; }
6: }
7:
8: public interface IEngine
9: {
10: void Work();
11: }
12:
13: public class ElectricEngine : IEngine
14: {
15: int batteryPrecentageLeft;
16: public int BatteryPrecentageLeft
17: {
18: get { return this.batteryPrecentageLeft; }
19: set { this.batteryPrecentageLeft = value; }
20: }
21:
22: void IEngine.Work() { }
23: }
If you would try to serialize myCar using the regular XmlSerializer, you will get the error above.
There are many reasons why you shouldn’t want to serialize an interface typed member. I will not dive into this debate right now. I assume that you have considered this before, and are just looking for a workaround.
So first lets understand what we are trying to achieve.
In the example above, I expect the serialized output of myCar to be something like this:
1: <Car xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
2: <Model>Ford Focus</Model>
3: <Year>2011</Year>
4: <Engine>
5: <ElectricEngine FullAssemblyQualifiedTypeName="Common.ElectricEngine, Common, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null">
6: <BatteryPrecentageLeft>70</BatteryPrecentageLeft>
7: </ElectricEngine>
8: </Engine>
9: </Car>
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