How to (xml) serialize a uri

Question

I have a class I've marked as Serializable, with a Uri property. How can I get the Uri to serialize/Deserialize without making the property of type string?

Answer 1

With xml serializer, you are limited - it isn't as versatile as (say) some of the binaryformatter/ISerializable options. One frequent trick is to have a second property for serialization:

[XmlIgnore]
public Uri Uri {get;set;}

[XmlAttribute("uri")]
[Browsable(false), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
public string UriString {
    get {return Uri == null ? null : Uri.ToString();}
    set {Uri = value == null ? null : new Uri(value);}
}

The two browsable attributes hide it from view (but it needs to be on the public API for XmlSerializer to use it). The XmlIgnore tells it not to try the Uri; and the [XmlAttribute(...)] (or [XmlElement(...)]) tells it to rename UriString when (de)serializing it.

(note that EditorBrowsable only applies to code outside the assembly declaring the type)