XmlSerializer serialize generic List of interface

Question

I'm trying to use the XmlSerializer to persist a List(T) where T is an interface. The serializer does not like interfaces. I'm curious if there is a simple way to serialize a list of heterogeneous objects easily with XmlSerializer. Here's what I'm going for:

    public interface IAnimal
    {
        int Age();
    }
    public class Dog : IAnimal
    {
        public int Age()
        {
            return 1;
        }
    }
    public class Cat : IAnimal
    {
        public int Age()
        {
            return 1;
        }
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        var animals = new List<IAnimal>
        {
            new Dog(),
            new Cat()
        };

        var x = new XmlSerializer(animals.GetType());
        var b = new StringBuilder();
        var w = XmlTextWriter.Create(b, new XmlWriterSettings { NewLineChars = "\r\n", Indent = true });
        //FAIL - cannot serialize interface. Does easy way to do this exist?
        x.Serialize(w, animals);
        var s = b.ToString();    
    }

Answer 1

You can use XmlSerializer as well, but you need to include all the possible types that can appear in the object graph you're serializing, which limits extensibility and lowers maintainability. You can do it by using an overload of the constructor of XmlSerializer:

var x = new XmlSerializer(animals.GetType(), new Type[] { typeof(Cat), typeof(Dog) });

Also, there are several issues of note when using XmlSerializer, all of the outlined here (MSDN) - for example look under the heading 'Dynamically generated assemblies'.

Answer 2

The XmlSerializer can't handle an interface because it doesn't know which types to create when deserialising. To get around this you need to handle that part of the serialization yourself by implementing the IXmlSerializable interface. This allows you to record the type so you can re-create (deserialise) it.

The ListOfIAnimal class below shows how I inherited and extended the generic list List<IAnimal> to implement the required interface. I squished up your old classes adding an extra non-interface field to each so I could see that the concrete classes were getting serialised and deserialised properly.

Compared to your code I'm just using the new type ListOfIAnimal in place of List<IAnimal>, the other changes are just a little refactoring.

Its complete code, just copy it into it's own .cs file, call the first function to step through it.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace Serialiser
{
    static class SerialiseInterface
    {
        public static void SerialiseAnimals()
        {
            String finalXml;

            // Serialize
            {
                var animals = new ListOfIAnimal{
                    new Dog() { Age = 5, Teeth = 30 },
                    new Cat() { Age = 6, Paws = 4 }
                };

                var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(animals.GetType());
                var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
                var xmlTextWriter = XmlTextWriter.Create(stringBuilder, new XmlWriterSettings { NewLineChars = "\r\n", Indent = true });
                xmlSerializer.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, animals);
                finalXml = stringBuilder.ToString();
            }

            // Deserialise
            {
                var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ListOfIAnimal));
                var xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(finalXml));
                ListOfIAnimal animals = (ListOfIAnimal)xmlSerializer.Deserialize(xmlReader);
            }
        }
    }

    public class ListOfIAnimal : List<IAnimal>, IXmlSerializable
    {
        public ListOfIAnimal() : base() { }

        #region IXmlSerializable
        public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; }

        public void ReadXml(XmlReader reader)
        {
            reader.ReadStartElement("ListOfIAnimal");
            while (reader.IsStartElement("IAnimal"))
            {
                Type type = Type.GetType(reader.GetAttribute("AssemblyQualifiedName"));
                XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(type);

                reader.ReadStartElement("IAnimal");
                this.Add((IAnimal)serial.Deserialize(reader));
                reader.ReadEndElement(); //IAnimal
            }
            reader.ReadEndElement(); //ListOfIAnimal
        }

        public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
        {
            foreach (IAnimal animal in this)
            {
                writer.WriteStartElement("IAnimal");
                writer.WriteAttributeString("AssemblyQualifiedName", animal.GetType().AssemblyQualifiedName);
                XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(animal.GetType());
                xmlSerializer.Serialize(writer, animal);
                writer.WriteEndElement();
            }
        }
        #endregion
    }

    public interface IAnimal { int Age { get; set; } }
    public class Dog : IAnimal { public int Age { get; set;} public int Teeth { get; set;} }
    public class Cat : IAnimal { public int Age { get; set;} public int Paws { get; set;} }
}

I thought about leaving deserialize as an exercise for the reader, but the code would'n be very useful without it.