IXmlSerializable Interface

There are two reasons to implement this interface. The first is to control how your object is serialized or deserialized by the XmlSerializer. For example, you can chunk data into bytes instead of buffering large data sets, and also avoid the inflation that occurs when the data is encoded using Base64 encoding. To control the serialization, implement the ReadXml and WriteXml methods to control the XmlReader and XmlWriter classes used to read and write the XML. For an example of this, see How To: Chunk Serialized Data.

The second reason is to be able to control the schema. To enable this, you must apply the XmlSchemaProviderAttribute to the serializable type, and specify the name of the static member that returns the schema. See the XmlSchemaProviderAttribute for an example.

A class that implements the interface must have a parameterless constructor. This is a requirement of the XmlSerializer class.

The following example code shows an implementation of the IXmlSerializable interface that serializes a private field.

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Schema;
using System.Xml.Serialization;


public class Person : IXmlSerializable
{

    // Private state

    private string personName;


    // Constructors

    public Person (string name)
    {
        personName = name;
    }

    public Person ()
    {
        personName = null;
    }


    // Xml Serialization Infrastructure

    public void WriteXml (XmlWriter writer)
    {
        writer.WriteString(personName);
    }

    public void ReadXml (XmlReader reader)
    {
        personName = reader.ReadString();
    }

    public XmlSchema GetSchema()
    {
        return(null);
    }


    // Print

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return(personName);
    }

}

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Portable Class Library

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

Reference

Other Resources