How can I add a type constraint to include anything serializable in a generic method?

Question

My generic method needs to serialize the object passed to it, however just insisting that it implements ISerializable doesn\'t seem to work. For example, I have a struct ret

Answer 1

I wrote a length blog article on this subject that you may find helpful. It mainly goes into binary serialization but the concepts are applicable to most any serialization format.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/jaredpar/archive/2009/03/31/is-it-serializable.aspx

The long and short of it is

• There is no way to add a reliable generic constraint
• The only way to check and see if an object was serializable is to serialize it and see if the operation succeeds