Excluding some properties during serialization without changing the original class

Question

I\'m trying to serialize an object with several properties, but I don\'t want to include all properties in the serialization. Also, I would like to change the date format.

Answer 1

For whoever is interested, I decided to use XmlAttributeOverrides, but made them more strong typed (I hate to type property names as strings). Here is the extension method I used for it:

    public static void Add(this XmlAttributeOverrides overrides, Expression> propertySelector, XmlAttributes attributes)
    {
        overrides.Add(typeof(T), propertySelector.BuildString(), attributes);
    }

    public static string BuildString(this Expression propertySelector)
    {
        switch (propertySelector.NodeType)
        {
            case ExpressionType.Lambda:
                LambdaExpression lambdaExpression = (LambdaExpression)propertySelector;
                return BuildString(lambdaExpression.Body);

            case ExpressionType.Convert:
            case ExpressionType.Quote:
                UnaryExpression unaryExpression = (UnaryExpression)propertySelector;
                return BuildString(unaryExpression.Operand);

            case ExpressionType.MemberAccess:

                MemberExpression memberExpression = (MemberExpression)propertySelector;
                MemberInfo propertyInfo = memberExpression.Member;

                if (memberExpression.Expression is ParameterExpression)
                {
                    return propertyInfo.Name;
                }
                else
                {
                    // we've got a nested property (e.g. MyType.SomeProperty.SomeNestedProperty)
                    return BuildString(memberExpression.Expression) + "." + propertyInfo.Name;
                }

            default:
                // drop out and throw
                break;
        }
        throw new InvalidOperationException("Expression must be a member expression: " + propertySelector.ToString());
    }

Then, to ignore an attribute, I can beautifully add it to the ignore list:

    var overrides = new XmlAttributeOverrides();
    var ignore = new XmlAttributes { XmlIgnore = true };
    overrides.Add(m => m.Id, ignore);
    overrides.Add(m => m.DateChanged, ignore);
    Type t = typeof(List);
    XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(t, overrides);