.NET base type cannot be serialized by WCF

wcf serialization datacontract datamember configurationelement
vradenburg picture vradenburg · Oct 30, 2008 · Viewed 11.3k times · Source

I'm writing a WCF service and want to expose some custom configuration elements (e.g. Custom ConfigurationSection and ConnectionStringSettings) so that I can modify the service's configuration.

One of my custom configuration elements inherits from System.Configuration.ConfigurationElementCollection. When I try to start my WCF service I get the following error message...

Type 'System.Configuration.ConfigurationElementCollection' cannot be serialized. Consider marking it with the DataContractAttribute attribute, and marking all of its members you want serialized with the DataMemberAttribute attribute.

Is there a way to implement the DataContract for this Type? I have my inherited class marked with the [DataContract] attribute.

Answer

quillbreaker picture quillbreaker · Mar 4, 2010

Just hit this issue today. It was confusing because the problem came up moving a project from machine to machine. This article seems relevant:

http://blogs.msdn.com/youssefm/archive/2009/08/10/serializing-plain-old-clr-objects-poco-types-with-datacontractserializer.aspx

To summarize in case of link rot, the issue seems to emerge in runtime 3.5 and go away in runtime 3.5 SP1.

Related questions

DataContract XML serialization and XML attributes

Is it possible to deserialize this XML into an object marked with the DataContract attribute? <root> <distance units="m">1000</distance> </root> As you may see there is "units" attribute. I don't believe …

Read More
How can I ignore a property when serializing using the DataContractSerializer?

I am using .NET 3.5SP1 and DataContractSerializer to serialize a class. In SP1, they changed the behavior so that you don't have to include DataContract/DataMember attributes on the class and it will just serialize the entire thing. This is …

Read More
What are the downsides to turning off ProxyCreationEnabled for CTP5 of EF code first

The only way that my WCF service can return classes from a code first model is by setting the ProxyCreationEnable to false using the code below. ((IObjectContextAdapter)MyDb).ObjectContext.ContextOptions.ProxyCreationEnable = false; What are the negative consequences of doing this? …

Read More