How to change a serialized object?

Question

I have a lot of serialized objects saved as XML, but I would like to add 2 variables to these objects.

Here is my object:

public class MyObject{
    public Int32 MyVariables = 0;
}

This object has been serialized quite a bit, and I want keep the ability to read these "older" files into my application.

But I need to add a few more variables to make the object better, such as:

public class MyObject{
    public Int32 MyVariables = 0;
    public Dictionary<string,MyEnum> MyDict = new Dictionary<string,MyEnum>();
}

Can anyone suggest the best method to add these new variables? I actually changed MyObject and added the dictionary and I believe it is no longer being read in properly.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I'm also not able to catch an exception anywhere to see where it fails when reading in the object, I'm doing this to do so:

System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter formatter = new System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter();
object obj = formatter.Deserialize(File.Open(Path, FileMode.Open));

Edit 2: I believe this actually may be due to me using an Enum as part of the dictionary, I added [Serializable] above the enum and it still doesn't work - thoughts?

Answer 1

Just add the new variables.

If the XML serializer does not find an appropriate representation for the new variables, it will initialize them with default values.