CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xml-serialization
Wim ten Brink
Wim ten Brink

Reputation: 26682

Data serialization with and without specific field

I have a simple set of 20+ classes. They are all serializable to allow use of these objects within a web service. (DataContract/DataMember) Each of them has an ID and a variable number of other properties, depending on the class.
And I have a database which will store just an ID, a Name that identifies the class and an XML string. And this XML is also the same data in serialized form, but without one property: the ID field should not be stored, since it's redundant.
But the ID must still be sent to the client of the web service, making things a bit complex. And although I could just create a copy of each class, where one has the ID as DataMember and the other doesn't, I'm just looking for a much cleaner solution to solve this. One where I would not need to store the ID field as part of the XML within the database.
So, question: what is the simplest solution to make sure the ID becomes part of the data that's sent to the client, but skipped when storing it as XML? (Without the need of hacking in the XML to remove it.)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 94

Answers (1)

Dennis
Dennis

Reputation: 37770

And although I could just create a copy of each class, where one has the ID as DataMember and the other doesn't

What about inheritance?

public class MyEntity
{
  // some props
}

public class MyEntityWithId : MyEntity
{
  public int Id { get; set; }
  // some props
}

Upvotes: 1

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