When a class is inherited from List<>, XmlSerializer doesn't serialize other attributes

Question

I\'m having a situation here, I need my class to be inherited from List, but when I do this XmlSerializer does not serialize any property or fie

Answer 1

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.