DataContractSerializer missing from the .NET Compact Framework

Question

It appears that the DataContractSerializer isn't available in the .NET Compact Framework. I found this quite surprising, as I consider DataContractSerializer to be the Holy Grail of serialization, and one of the most widely useful classes introduced in .NET 3.

Is there a way to get the same functionality under the Compact Framework, that is, the ability to easily save and restore real-world object graphs using a textual format?

I'd rather keep away from the older, limited .NET serializers such as XmlSerializer and BinarySerializer.

I'm thinking perhaps there's a custom implementation of DataContractSerializer available, or maybe it's possible to use the code from Mono? Has anyone tried to do this?

Answer 1

Is it not available in CF 3.5? (edit: nope, I checked - indeed it is not). I know that XmlSerialzier is there, but yes, it does have some limitations.

Does it need to be text-based? On option is protobuf-net, which works on CF2.0, CF3.5, Silverlight, Mono, .NET 2.0, etc; and includes all the things you commonly need (including callbacks etc).

By the way, the Mono code (from "Olive") is, last time I looked, not very complete...

(edit) One other option might be Json.NET; from here, this now works on CF; since this is JSON, it is text-based, and should do most of what you need.