Serialization method containing dictionary member classes under .NET 2.0

This article extends a previous discussion on serializing dictionary member classes. This class contains three properties: guiPath, configPath and mappedDrives. mappedDrives is a dictionary used to map drive letters to network paths.

However, when serializing or deserializing the class, the user receives the following error:

Cannot serialize member App.Configfile.mappedDrives

This error occurs for some reason that the generic dictionary in .NET 2.0 is not XML-serialized.

Solutions

To solve this problem, users can use custom serializable dictionary classes. Paul Welter provides a class like this on his blog:

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

[XmlRoot("dictionary")]
public class SerializableDictionary : Dictionary, IXmlSerializable
{
    // 部分代码省略 ...
}

This class implements the IXmlSerializable interface, allowing it to be serialized and deserialized. The user can then use this custom dictionary class in his main class:

// ...

public Dictionary mappedDrives = new SerializableDictionary();

// ...

This should allow the class to be serialized and deserialized correctly.